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A President Kerry would be a disaster for Israel

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[font=Arial, Helvetica]A President Kerry would be a disaster for Israel[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]By Martin Peretz[/font]

kerry_pointing2.jpg








[font=Helvetica, Arial]http://www.jewishworldreview.com |[/font] [font=Arial, Helvetica]Like many American Jews, I was brought up to believe that if I pulled the Republican lever on the election machine my right hand would wither and, as the Psalmist says, my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth.

According to the Bible, of course, these are the feared consequences of forgetting Jerusalem. Now although there are many reasons one might want to vote for John F. Kerry, remembering Jerusalem — remembering to stand up for the state of Israel — is not among them.

It is true that Kerry's campaign pronouncements have been unexceptionable from the pro-Zionist point of view. Yes, he flip-flopped on the miles of trenches and fences Israel is building to defend itself from the plague of terrorism, first attacking the structure as "another barrier to peace," then accepting it as "a legitimate act of self-defense."


He has also floundered concerning what can be expected of Yasser Arafat. Just as Arafat was launching the second intifada in 2000, Kerry asserted optimistically that we must "look to Chairman Arafat to exert much greater leadership." Three days later, he portentously declared the obvious on CBS' "Face the Nation," calling the Israel-Palestinian conflict "an extraordinarily complicated, incredibly deep-rooted problem." What made this problem so extraordinary and incredible? "Arafat has forces around him, underneath him, close by him that don't want peace, that are working against what he is doing," Kerry said by way of exoneration. (And, to sustain the moral equivalence of the parties in his head, he added, "The same is true of Prime Minister [Ehud] Barak" — which was nonsense, as there wasn't a single such person in Barak's circle.)


By now, to be sure, Kerry thinks that Arafat's "support" for terrorism has already rendered him unfit as a partner for peace. And his votes in the Senate (like all but a handful of senators) have been routinely friendly to Israel.


So why am I still exercised about John Kerry?


It's the ramifications of his foreign policy in general, especially his fixation on the United Nations as the arbiter of international legitimacy, proctor of that "global test."

Save for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, Israel loses every struggle at the U.N. against lopsided majorities. In the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission, Muslim states trade their votes to protect aggressors and tyrannies from censure in exchange for libels against the Jewish state. The body's bloated and dishonest bureaucracies are no better, as evidenced most recently by the head of the U.N. Palestine refugee organization, who defended having Hamas militants on his staff.

I've searched to find one time when Kerry — even candidate Kerry — criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I've come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union's continuous hectoring. Another thing that bothers me about Kerry is the deus ex machina he has up his sleeve: the appointment of a presidential envoy. It's hard to count how many special emissaries have been dispatched from Washington to the Middle East to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's easy to see is that none of them has gotten to "yes."

In recent years, both former CIA Director George Tenet and former Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, once the chief of the U.S. Central Command, have served in this meaningless position. And who would Kerry designate? He first suggested the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter and James Baker, Bush 41's secretary of state.

Then he found out — why he didn't know this is another matter — that both Carter and Baker are deeply distrusted by the Israelis, and by American Jews. There was no mystery as to why. Carter (well, how does one say this?) is not exactly a friend to the Jewish nation and, besides, his favorite politician in the Middle East was the mass murderer Hafez Assad, the late president of Syria. A huge beneficiary of Saudi business, Baker was adept at pooh-poohing concerns about Israeli security. So we are left with Kerry's other putative designee, Bill Clinton, whose national security staff was so mesmerized by the mirage of a quickie Israel-Palestinian peace at the end of his term that, according to the Sept. 11 commission report, it couldn't be bothered take out Osama bin Laden after the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Clinton succeeded in squeezing Israel into the extravagant Camp David and Taba formulas but failed to get Arafat to go along. At least for Israel, these proposa! ls are now toast. For his part, Kerry grabs at any showy idea to demonstrate his sense of urgency. As a response to militant Islam and to encourage moderate Muslims, the presidential aspirant proposed that "the great religious figures of the planet" — he mentioned the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and the Dalai Lama — hold a summit. To do exactly … what?


"To begin to help the world to see the ways in which Islam is not, in fact, a threat," Kerry said, "and to isolate those who are, and to give people the strength to be able to come together in a global effort to take away their financing, their freedom to move, their sanctuary and so forth."

This muddled foolishness reflects Kerry's sense of politics as desperate theater. Another simply showy idea he proposed (to Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press") was to insert U.S. troops between Israel and the territories, as part "of some kind of very neutral international effort that began to allow Israel itself to disengage and withdraw."
Now, if anything would put U.S. soldiers in harm's way it is such a move, exposing our men and women to fiercely competing gangs of suicide bombers and other killers.



Kerry asserted on "Meet the Press" that it is "Israel's presence [in the territories that] puts Israel in difficult circumstances and obviously creates an enormous handle for Osama bin Laden for all the radicals and extremists to hang on to." But this stands history on its head. It is not the occupation that caused the conflict. It is the very existence of Israel — even within the unbearably narrow 1949 cease-fire lines.

To project his Middle East bona fides, Kerry has bashed President Bush dozens of times for supposedly showing no interest in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, for breaking a continuum going back at least 30 years.

"Some cliches," wrote the dovish Israeli journalist Aluf Benn in the even more dovish Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "become permanent features in public until someone takes the trouble to check out their validity."

Which is what Benn did. And what did he find? The Bush administration "has been far more involved than any previous administrations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has courageously presented the two sides with practical objectives and demands."

Kerry seems to have nostalgia for the peacemaking ways of Clinton. But what Clinton actually bequeathed to George W., says Benn, was "an Israeli-Palestinian war and a total collapse of the hopes that flourished in the 1990s…. The height of the peace process during the Clinton era, the Camp David summit in July 2000, was a classic example of inept diplomacy, an arrogant and rash move whose initiators failed to take into account the realpolitik, misunderstood Arafat and brought upon both Israelis and Palestinians the disaster of the intifada."

By contrast, Bush has committed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to a Palestinian state and to a withdrawal from some, though certainly not all, of the settlements. In return, the president has recognized that the most populous and strategically pivotal settlements would remain in Israeli hands and has also ruled out what would be suicide for Israel, the return of Palestinian refugees after 56 years. The Palestinians have not yet signed on to these particulars. But they are the future details of any peace.

Bush's empathy for the government in Israel is particularly remarkable, because empathy was altogether foreign to both Bush pere and his secretary of State. One can only imagine the horror of George H.W. and Baker (to whom the current president may actually owe his office) in seeing the inheritor become a true ally of Israel. Yet there it is. And with his understanding of — and sympathy for — the Israeli predicament, Bush has coaxed from Sharon an agreement to withdraw unilaterally from all the Gaza settlements and from four in the West Bank — something even left-wing governments, as Benn puts it, "were afraid to do." Kerry, meanwhile, appears ready to formulaically follow the failed precepts of the past, complete with photo ops and multiple interlocutors. This is a road map to nowhere.
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Yet another excellent rhetorical! It would not only be a sad state for the US, but for quite a few of our allies as well.

[font=Arial, Helvetica] "To begin to help the world to see the ways in which Islam is not, in fact, a threat," Kerry said, "and to isolate those who are, and to give people the strength to be able to come together in a global effort to take away their financing, their freedom to move, their sanctuary and so forth." [/font]
I agree with this statement. Islam itself is NOT a threat - its the "Liberal Movements within Islam"[def] that is the issue. There are, like Christianity, many movements within the religeon that are radical. Several of the Islamic movements are radical to the extream of murder and forced slavery if one does not condone thier sense of government or personal perspective. The hardest part can be identifing those movements and removing the ability to force thier perspective on others. Enter War on Terror stage right.

Shimshon, what is your position on a palistinian state and the pull out of the gaza?
 
Kerry's Foreign Policy: Sacrificing Israel

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A25
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53015-2004Oct21.html



The centerpiece of John Kerry's foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances
so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this
endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The
problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this.

The mere appearance of a Europhilic fresh face is unlikely to so thrill the
allies that French troops will start marching down the streets of Baghdad.
Therefore, you can believe that Kerry is just being cynical in pledging to
bring in the allies, knowing that he has no way of doing it. Or you can
believe, as I do, that he means it.

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do
it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve
of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail
about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most
friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the
overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange
for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in
to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of
Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines. Read what former Clinton
national security adviser Sandy Berger said in "Foreign Policy for a
Democratic President," a manifesto written while he was a senior foreign
policy adviser to Kerry.

"As part of a new bargain with our allies, the United States must re-engage
in . . . ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . As we re-engage in
the peace process and rebuild frayed ties with our allies, what should a
Democratic president ask of our allies in return? First and foremost, we
should ask for a real commitment of troops and money to Afghanistan and
Iraq."

So in a "new bargain with our allies" America "re-engages" in the "peace
process" in return for troops and money in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Do not be fooled by the euphemism "peace process." We know what "peace
process" meant during the eight years Berger served in the Clinton White
House -- a White House to which Yasser Arafat was invited more often than
any other leader on the planet. It meant believing Arafat's deceptions about
peace while letting him get away with the most virulent incitement to and
unrelenting support of terrorism. It meant constant pressure on Israel to
make one territorial concession after another -- in return for nothing.
Worse than nothing: Arafat ultimately launched a vicious terror war that
killed a thousand Israeli innocents.

"Re-engage in the peace process" is precisely what the Europeans, the
Russians and the United Nations have been pressuring the United States to do
for years. Do you believe any of them have Israel's safety at heart? They
would sell out Israel in an instant, and they are pressuring America to do
precisely that.

Why are they so upset with President Bush's Israeli policy? After all, isn't
Bush the first president ever to commit the United States to an independent
Palestinian state? Bush's sin is that he also insists the Palestinians
genuinely accept Israel and replace the corrupt, dictatorial terrorist
leadership of Yasser Arafat.

To reengage in a "peace process" while the violence continues and while
Arafat is in charge is to undo the Bush Middle East policy. That policy --
isolating Arafat, supporting Israel's right to defend itself both by
attacking the terrorist infrastructure and by building a defensive fence --
has succeeded in defeating the intifada and producing an astonishing 84
percent reduction in innocent Israeli casualties.

John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no
issue on which the United States more consistently fails the global test of
international consensus than Israel. In July, the U.N. General Assembly
declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150 to 6. In
defending Israel, America stood almost alone.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel.
Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply
relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian
leadership that has proved (at Camp David in 2000) it will never make peace. The allies will appreciate that. Then turn around and say to them: We're
doing our part (against Israel), now you do yours (in Iraq). If Kerry is
elected, the pressure on Israel will begin on day one.
 
Tell me where I should post my opinion to a 'palestinian' state and the pull out of gaza.
 
An international forum has been created for discussion outside US. :)

[back on topic]
I pray for not only our country, but the world that Kerry does not get elected.

I agree with the washington post, Kerry will rub noses with folks that are not in our best interests. We simply cannot turn our back to Israel now. Every free nation depends on our position. We need to continue forward - not back.
 
For Kerry, ‘Multilateralism’ is Yiddish for ‘Au revoir, Israel’

[font=Arial, Helvetica]For Kerry, ‘Multilateralism’ is Yiddish for ‘Au revoir, Israel’[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]By Sam Schulman[/font]

kerry_waves.jpg








[font=Helvetica, Arial]http://www.jewishworldreview.com |[/font] [font=Arial, Helvetica]Senator Kerry has promised to bring Europe into closer sympathy with U.S. policy and bring new allies to U.S. initiatives overseas. But how would he pull it off? After all, Europe is a big and complicated place, not a rich widow to be courted with charm and boyish ambition. Senator Kerry is already happily married and, if he is elected, will have achieved his boyish ambition — every bit of it. What would President Kerry do, or be able to do, to deliver on his promise?

Few have answered the question of how Kerry would achieve "multilateralism" — fewer have even asked it. The willingness to believe that he can do it — at least among my Manhattan neighbors — is based on not much more than snobbery. Kerry is a Forbes, he does not speak with a Southern accent, he has some French, he does not have a reputation as a "cowboy," he has not only gone to a good prep school and to Yale, as Bush has done, but he has the accent. Of course European opinion may share the same prejudices. But these are trivial matters — and not all of our European critics are trivial. What really of substance would a President Kerry have to offer them, after the novelty of not being Bush has worn off?

In fact, a President Kerry would have remarkably few options. On the war on terror, he has no more to give. He cannot abandon the fight against terror — although some believe that his way of waging war would be much more attuned to his languid way of doing the few things he has done in his adult life. But the Europeans do not fault us for waging this war, nor are they unwilling to see us wage it primarily with American and British blood and American taxes — as they were happy to see us wage and win the cold war. We are fighting on their behalf, and if we are willing to do so even though it may in the short term hobble our economic competitiveness and our popularity in the less-developed world, well, as the French say, so much the better! As to the cynical expectation that Kerry would wage war with less competence and energy than Bush? The worst of both worlds: more popularity for America and more active terrorists — to threaten European safety and prosperity.


On the war on Iraq — again, if we strip away the hypocrisy, France and Russia are happy to see us take the casualties and spend the money — while they have no longer to worry about Iraq's military threat and their consciences are spared their collaboration with the monstrous Saddam regime. Farther east, China is happy to see us engaged elsewhere, leaving them a freer hand with the Taiwan.



In economic policy, Senator Kerry has already promised to wage trade war against the rest of the world, so he has nothing to give there.

If a President Kerry were to announce that he was going to withdraw from Iraq immediately, reinstall the Ba'ath party, assign responsibility for the fight against terror to the cast of Law & Order — and, for that matter, ratify the Kyoto treaty — it would leave the Europeans cold (and most likely terribly alarmed for their own safety and prosperity).

No, the real issue that divides America from Europe — from its journalists, its elites, its Governments and the hearts of its people — is our sentimental and practical attachment to Israel. This anachronistic attachment — which was sensibly abandoned by most European countries in October 1973, when the OPEC oil embargo began — is the single greatest obstacle to l'amitie transatlantique.

The way to gain the hearts and minds of Europe is to adopt their view of the Jewish state: a troublesome, morally dubious enterprise which is the root cause of terror. Moreover, the desire of Jews for national self-determination is absurdly passי. If Czechs and Britons would be better off in a superstate designed to ensure that national self-determination should be a thing of the past, how dare the Jews carry on as if it were still 1919 and the writ of the Balfour Agreement still extended East of Suez?

The behavior of French tourists at Auschwitz recently, who took the opportunity to rebuke Jewish citizens of Israel, perfectly expresses this view. The Jewish national aspiration ought to be an artifact in Holocaust museums — that's what they're there for! But as for Israel itself — though its lineage derives from the same promises the Allied powers in World War I made to the people of the Baltic states, the Syrians and Lebanese, the Armenians, the Poles and the Czechs — its time is up. No more ought Israel be capable of defending her borders, protect her citizens, or maintain her identity as the national state of the Jews. And what difference would it make, Kerry's advisors would argue? — Israel would only be aspiring to the condition of Canada.

In practice, what would this mean? For one thing, a Kerry administration truly interested in international amity would no longer vote against the UN General Assembly resolutions denying Israel's right to defend herself — and would no longer threaten to use its veto in the Security Council. It would open itself to the reasonable solutions proposed by such good Europeans as Tony Judt, who proposes a Yugoslavian solution — only better — for Israelis and Palestinians.

A Kerry administration would instruct the American judge at the International Court of Justice to vote with the majority of his fellow judges — and would no doubt join the International Criminal Court, poised to arraign Israeli politicians and soldiers. And an internationalized solution to the Palestinian problem would be at hand — perhaps in the form of a Dutchbat patrol to protect Israelis and Iraqis from terror.

President Kerry would have few options — and no constraints. Some 80% of American Jews will already have voted for him. The Democratic Party has already learned to absorb a distinct anti-Semitic tinge without protest — the Reverend Mr. Al Sharpton and Representative Cynthia McKinney, explanations that Bush is controlled by sinister Svengalis. And from what we know of Senator Kerry, he will take the easiest course. And Americans will need all of the new First Lady's language skills to say goodbye to Israel: "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu" — and wise Israelis will be thinking of another line from the song: "I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly."
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:eek:
 
Re: For Kerry, ‘Multilateralism’ is Yiddish for ‘Au revoir, Israel’

I watched Celcius 41.11 yesterday.

Micheal Medvid(sp?) said that because Kerry did not even mention Israel in his "acceptance" speech to the DNC and it scares him.

"JFK" is only out for "JFK" and nothing else.
 
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