The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Civil Fights: Just another bit of fish wrapping
Oct. 15, 2008
Evelyn Gordon , THE JERUSALEM POST

Does anyone still remember George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon? At the time, it was touted as Israel's main quid pro quo for uprooting 25 settlements, expelling some 10,000 Israelis from their homes and withdrawing the army from Gaza. Yet today, it is never mentioned - and for good reason: In the ensuing four years, the Bush and Olmert administrations between them have systematically eviscerated every "achievement" it allegedly granted Israel.

Take, for instance, its pledge that "the United States will lead efforts, working together with Jordan, Egypt and others in the international community, to... prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means."

In reality, Palestinians have fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortar shells from Gaza since the August 2005 disengagement, more than triple the pre-pullout volume. The Palestinian Authority, which controlled Gaza until Hamas's June 2007 coup, made no effort to prevent this. Yet far from "leading the effort" against this threat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice preferred to press Israel for more concessions, claiming that absent these, the PA could not be expected to fight terror.

Specifically, she demanded a "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank - which would have enabled rocket technology to spread to the latter - and the reopening of the Israel-Gaza border, which would have eased terrorist procurement and infiltration. In November 2005, she bullied Sharon into signing an agreement that included both provisions, but Olmert, to his credit, froze it because of the ongoing rocket fire. Nevertheless, she continued pressing these demands, most recently in her May 2007 "benchmarks" plan.

THE LETTER also pledged that "Israel will retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations," if Gaza did prove "a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means" than diplomatic pressure. In reality, Washington pressed Olmert to avoid anything beyond ineffective, small-scale military operations. But there, it was pushing against an open door: Olmert wanted a major operation as little as Bush did.

Thus in theory, Bush's letter offered a multilayered security guarantee: Either the PA would provide security voluntarily, or the U.S. would "lead the effort" to force it to do so, or if all else failed, Israel would protect itself militarily. Instead, Palestinians launched daily attacks from Gaza without suffering any serious diplomatic or military consequences. And the world will now expect Israel to accept this as the model for future withdrawals as well.

Equally grave, however, is the evisceration of two key diplomatic achievements. One was the letter's pledge that the refugee issue must be resolved "through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel." The US has not reiterated this with the consistency and clarity necessary to convince the Palestinians that it is serious. But at least it never officially backtracked.

Olmert, however, single-handedly gutted this achievement by offering to absorb some 20,000 Palestinian refugees under any deal. And as everyone knows, the minute you concede the principle, the price is negotiable.

Predictably, therefore, the world is already pressuring Israel to raise the figure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, for instance, declared earlier this month that not only must Tzipi Livni honor Olmert's offer, she might even have to increase it: "I don't know how many [refugees Israel must accept] - 10,000 or 100,000, I don't know," he said.

The second achievement was the letter's promise that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

THE BUSH administration began gutting this promise almost immediately, by objecting vociferously to Israeli construction in these "major population centers." Clearly, if the settlement blocs were to remain Israeli, there was no reason to oppose construction within them. Thus by declaring construction within the blocs no more legitimate than construction elsewhere in the West Bank, Washington signaled that in fact, it did not believe Israel should retain them.

Last month, however, it made its retraction explicit: Speaking to the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, US Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles said Rice had told both sides that negotiations must be based on withdrawal to the 1949 lines. The State Department subsequently issued a denial, but its denial said merely that "the US government has not taken a position on borders." In other words, Washington no longer considers a return to the 1949 lines "unrealistic"; at best, it has "no position" on borders.

Olmert, however, has gutted this provision no less thoroughly: Last month, he told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the territorial price of an agreement would be "very close to a formula of one for one." That means the border will basically be the 1949 lines: If the Palestinians must receive equivalent territory inside Israel for any West Bank territory Israel keeps, any adjustments to these lines will necessarily be minor. Olmert then repeated this in a Rosh Hashana interview with Yediot Aharonot, saying Israel "should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in east Jerusalem," and compensate the Palestinians by "close to a 1:1 ratio" for any land it does retain.

CLEARLY, THE world will expect any future government to abide by this, since offers made during one round of negotiations are always the starting point for the next. Thus not only has Washington abrogated its 2004 promise, but Olmert has buried any possibility of resuscitating it.

Sharon claimed to have secured three American pledges in exchange for the disengagement: a free hand in fighting Palestinian terror post-withdrawal, opposition to resettling Palestinian refugees in Israel and support for retention of the settlement blocs. And most Israelis considered this trade-off worthwhile.

Four years later, however, all three have evaporated - just as disengagement opponents warned that they would. And Bush's letter has become just another bit of fish wrapping.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017544656&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 21, 2008

Fundamentally Freund: The growing al-Qaida threat to Israel

By Michael Freund

By all accounts, the once vaunted terrorist organization known as al-Qaida now finds itself largely on the run.

In places as far afield as Iraq, Somalia and Yemen, the Islamist terror network has suffered painful setbacks in its deadly campaign for world hegemony. Its redoubts are under attack, its ideology is increasingly discredited and it has little to show for its efforts beyond a gruesome trail of murder and mayhem.

But here in the heart of the Middle East, right under Israel's nose, Osama Bin Laden's henchmen are busy setting up shop in Gaza virtually unmolested.

Indeed, the growing presence of al-Qaida offshoots along Israel's southern border is quite possibly one of the most ominous, yet least discussed threats, currently facing the Jewish state, and it is time we started taking this danger more seriously.

Earlier this month, on October 6, a shadowy group calling itself the "Hizbullah Brigades in Palestine" attempted to fire a rocket at Sderot which failed to reach its target. The previously unknown faction is reported to be one of at least a dozen al-Qaida-inspired radical Islamic terror cells that have sprouted up in Gaza in the past two years (Yediot Aharonot, October 17).

THESE GROUPS, with names such as "the Sword of Islam," "the Army of Islam" and "Soldiers of Allah," reject Hamas's occasional tactical decisions to forge cease-fire agreements with Israel and instead call for uncompromising confrontation with the Zionists.

In the past four months alone, these al-Qaida affiliates have fired 21 rockets and 18 mortar shells from Gaza at Israel, and they have planted explosive devices near the security fence in an attempt to kill and maim Israeli soldiers.

They have not shied away from trying to hit Western targets, too.

In January, during US President George W. Bush's visit to Israel, "the Army of Believers - al-Qaida in Palestine" attacked the American International School in Gaza twice in a three-day period (Reuters, January 12).

And in July, the police announced that they had arrested six people, including two Israeli Arabs, with links to al-Qaida who had plotted earlier this year to assassinate Bush during his return visit to take part in Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations (Associated Press, July 18).

Clearly, Osama's minions in Gaza are stepping up their activity as part of their ambitious plan to rid the Middle East of any Western or Jewish presence.

BUT JUST how exactly did they manage to take root in the area and plant a new network of terror?

The growing al-Qaida presence in Gaza is a direct consequence of Israel's August 2005 withdrawal and the security vacuum that it created. Just a few weeks after the IDF retreat was complete, Maj.-Gen. Aharon (Zeevi) Farkash, head of IDF Military Intelligence, told a Tel Aviv University audience that al-Qaida had exploited the chaos along the Egyptian-Gaza border to move operatives into the area. "Al-Qaida is in Gaza," Farkash said (Yediot Aharonot, Sept. 29, 2005).

In an interview several months later, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas concurred, telling the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that, "We have signs about the presence of al-Qaida in Gaza and th

BARACK OBAMA'S OBSESSION
(in his own words)

By John Davis
http://freeman.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/391-BARACK-OBAMAS-OBSESSION.html

America strives for racial healing. She wants a "post-racial" messiah who will absolve her of her racial "guilt" and wounds. And she thinks she found him. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.

But is he really the man he wants everybody believe he is? Or is he the one who himself is quite obsessed with the race? Nobody can answer these questions better than Barack Obama himself. And actually he answered them, answered fully in his book "The Dreams From My Father" written in 1995.

But did we really listen to the answers?

Born to a white mother and an African father whom he did not know Obama was struggling with his identity from the early years. With his mother away in Indonesia and far-away Kenyan father the main role in his upbringing went to "the street", to his friends. They had a great influence on the young boy.

One of them was Ray to whom Obama devoted a lot of time in the book. It was on the basketball court where he met "Ray and the other blacks close to my age, teenagers whose confusion and anger would help shape my own. 'That's just how white folks will do you,' one of them might say when we were alone. White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first. Later, when I was alone, I would try to untangle these difficult thoughts. Ray assured me that we would never talk about whites as whites in front of whites wthout knowng exactly what we were doing. Without knowing that there might be a price to pay." (80-81).

Born to a white mother, a black looking boy felt certain guilt toward Ray whom he adored and whose both parents were black. At times Ray's hostility towards whites did not make a lot of sense to Obama but he kept playing on this court in order to remain friends with Ray.

"Our rage at the white world needed no object, he seemed telling me, no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure. Sometimes, I would question his judgment if not his sincerity. We were not living in Jim Crow South, I would remind him. We weren't consigned to some heatless housing project in Harlem or the Bronx. We were in goddamned Hawaii. We said what we pleased, ate where we pleased; we sat in front of the proverbial bus. None of our white friends, guys like Jeff or Scott from the basketball team, treated us any differently than they treated each other. 'Well, that's true,' Ray would admit.

Maybe we could afford to give the bad-assed nigger pose a rest. Save it for when we really needed it.

And Ray would shake his head. A pose, huh? Speak for your own self.

And I would know that Ray had flashed his trump card, one that to his credit, he rarely played. I was different, after all, potentially suspect; I had no idea who my own self was. Unwilling to risk exposure, I would quickly retreat to safer ground" (81-82).

It appears that Obama was constantly under a pressure of an inner collision between as he put it "his black and his white worlds". To the extent that an absolutely innocent remarks or events where putting him on the edge. He describes a characteristic episode when by Ray's insistence he invited to an all black party his white basketball friends. He writes: "the presence of Jeff and Scott seemed to make no waves. 'But I could see right away that the scene had taken my white friends by surprise. They kept smiling a lot. They huddled together in a corner; they said 'Excuse me' every few minutes. After maybe an hour, they asked me if I'd be willing to take them home. In the car, Jeff put an arm on my shoulder, looking at once contrite and relieved. 'You know, man' he said, 'that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you or Ray sometimes, at school parties being the only back guys and all." (84)

If Barack Obama was an ordinary person and not one with self-created abnormal psychic constantly concerned with his identity this episode would not have stuck in his memory, but it did. This is how he reacted to Jeff's seemingly innocent words: "I snorted. 'Yeah. Right.' A part of me wanted to punch him right there" (84).

Moreover Jeff's and Scott's, as he saw it, uneasy behavior brought in him an ocean of hatred and desperation. "By the time I had dropped my friends off, I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher  wanted to spit in our face, he could because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning. In fact you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self had been freely chosen by you. At best these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing that you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger" (85).

Obama's fixation on black's powerlessness was nurtured in him by many people. One of them was Frank [late communist Frank Marshall Davis] whose advice he thought before going to college. Frank told him that for African American the real price of admission is "Leaving your race at the door." He explained: "You are not going to college to get educated. You are going there to get trained. They'll train you to want what you do not need. They'll train you to manipulate words so they do not mean anything more.  They'll train you so good, you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit. They'll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you're a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they'll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well trained, well-paid nigger, but you're a nigger just the same.' (97).

 Davis told Obama to be vigilant, to "stay awake". The task was hard, as Obama put it: "Keep your eyes open, he had warned. It wasn't as easy as it sounded. Not in sunny L.A. Not as you strolled through Occidental's campus, a few miles from Pasadena tree-lined and Spanish-tiled. The students were friendly, the teachers encouraging." (98).

For Obama, by that time sufficiently infected by the virus of racial obsession, behavior of other black students was troubling. As he wrote: "Most of the other black students at Oxy didn't seem all that worried about compromise.  So why couldn't I let it go? I do not know. I didn't have the luxury, I suppose, the certainty of the tribe" (98).

Obsessed with the loyalty to the tribe Obama was extremely critical of those black students who were ready to assimilate. He writes: "I had nothing to escape from except my own doubt. I was more like the black students who had grown up in suburbs, kids whose parents has already paid the price of escape. You could spot them right away by the way they talked, the people they sat with in the cafeteria. When pressed, they would sputter to explain that they refused to be categorized. They weren't defined by the color of their skin, they would tell you. They were individuals (99)."

And what was wrong with been individuals? For bi-racial Obama there was a hidden threat of "leaving his race at the door." The following episode with Joyce, whom Obama saw as an African American based on the color of her skin, puts in doubt today's Obama's pronunciations about post-racial America. "One day I asked her [Joyce] if she was going to the Black Students' Association meeting. She looked at me funny

'I am not black,' Joyce said. 'I'm multiracial.' 'It's not white people who are making me choose. No it's black people who always have to make everything racial. They're the ones making me choose. They're the ones who are telling me that I can't be who I am. (99)

In the next paragraph Obama makes again his obsession with race clear: "They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not other way around" (99-100).

Obama's recurrent concerns with the assimilation into the dominant culture played a key role in his life. Here is a story that he tells his sister: "Well there was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. One weekend she invited me to her family's country house. The parents were there, and they were nice, very gracious. ...The house was old, the library was filled with old books there was this tremendous gravity to the room" (200-211).

Knowing Obama's previous outbursts one should not be surprised with his reaction that followed: "Standing in that room, I realized that our two worlds, my friend's and mine, were as distant from each other as Kenya is from Germany. And I knew that if we stayed together I'd eventually live in hers. After all, I'd been doing it most of my life. Between two of us, I was the one who knew how to live as an outsider" (211)

On his sister's question, "So what happened?" Obama answered: "I pushed her away. We started to fight. One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, she said that anger was a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn't be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn't. She could only be herself, and wasn't that enough" (211).

 
Interesting, but the above episode is not the only one where Obama emphasizes his non-acceptance of non-black, non-African culture. Describing later his trip via Europe to Kenya he writes: "And by the end of the first week or so, I realized that I'd made a mistake. It wasn't that Europe wasn't beautiful; everything was just as I'd imagined it. It just wasn't mine. I felt as if I were living out someone's romance; the incompleteness of my own history stood between me and the sites I saw like a hard pane of glass. Stripped of language, stripped of work and routine - stripped even of the racial obsessions to which I'd become so accustomed and which I had taken (perversely) as sign of my own maturation - I had been forced to look inside myself and had found only a great emptiness their" (301-302).

It should not be surprising that Obama felt that way. Davis's warning "not to leave his race at the door" dominated his conscience and sub-conscience. After recalling in the book the episode with Joyce, who in his mind was betraying the black people by not affiliating with them enough, he writes: "The truth was that I understood her, her and all the other black kids who felt the way she did. And that's exactly what scared me. The confusion made me question my own racial credentials all over again, Ray's trump card still lurking in the back of my mind. I needed to put distance between them and myself, to convince myself that I wasn't compromised - that I was indeed still awake. To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxists professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted from Joyce or my past. After all there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names" (101).

Understanding Obama's obsession with race one must realize that it did not come only as a result of him been influenced by his friendship with Ray, Frank, and many others with similar views (reverend Jeremiah Write being not last among them). A huge role in his views played self-education. Immediately after the episode with Jeff and Scott that draw in his mind "suffocating picture" of white dominance over the black people, Obama embarked on the research of the subject. He writes: "Over the next few months, I looked to corroborate this nightmare vision. I gathered up books from the library - Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright, DuBois. But there was no escape to be had. In every page of every book I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. . Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; And yet, even as I imagined myself following Malcolm's call, one line in the book stayed me. He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged. I knew that for Malcolm, that wish would never be incidental. I knew as well that traveling down the road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. I was left to wonder what else I would be severing if and when I left my mother and my grandparents at some uncharted border. And too: If Malcolm's discovery toward the end of this life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation, that hope appeared in a distant future, in a far-off land" (85-86).

Obama invokes Malcolm X later in the book again when he talks about the black nationalism trying to explain its role for the black Americans. "Ever since the first time I'd picked up Malcolm X's autobiography, I had tried to untangle the twin strands of black nationalism. In talking to self-professed nationalists like Rafiq [black nationalist, former gang leader who converted to Islam], though, I came to see how the blanket indictment of everything white served a central function in their message of uplift; how psychologically, at least, one dependent on the other" (198).

And to what conclusion did Obama come after his conversations with Rafiq? "In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists.  If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence" (199-200).

If one continues leafing through pages of Barack Obama's book one will find many more similar discourses and contemplations. The point is not to collect all of them, but to bring attention to real Barack Obama. To Barack Obama who speaks in his own voice and not in the voice of a teleprompter.

In case one says that a lot of water has flown under the bridge since the time when Obama wrote his first book, one should be directed to the second Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" written in 2006 where he unequivocally stated: " My views [now] are not so much more refined than they were when I labored in obscurity as a community organizer."

How a person holding such views can be considered by a vast majority of Americans as a post-racial messiah will remain an eternal mystery.

------------------

Numbers in parenthesis correspond to page numbers from the book: Barack Obama 'Dreams From My Father'; Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York, 1995; 2004 version.

 SELF-DEFEAT 101
by Stephen Kruger
Copyright 2008 Stephen Kruger
 
The 1967 war was the third major, post-independence military attack of Israel by Arabs. In baseball, the rule is, three strikes, you're out. This practical should have been applied in 1967.
 
Instead, Israel continued its touchy-feely policy toward Arabs, put in place by left-wing Jews in Palestine at the end of World War I. The self-defeatism inherent in that policy caused Israel to lose the peace in 1948, to lose the peace again in 1956, and to cement its loss of the peace in 1967 by abandoning Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The denial of Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza created the condition precedent for some other sovereignty there. To bring into ex-nihilo existence a populace for some other sovereignty, Israel connived with Jordanians who lived in Judea and Samaria, and connived with Egyptians who lived in Gaza, to view themselves as "Palestinians," a term which theretofore never connoted a national identity. With further Israeli connivance, "Palestinians" created the potential sovereignty of "Palestine." Moreover, during the intifadas, Israel took quarter-measures. Israel did not attack Arabs in response to Arab murders of Jews. No rockets were fired into Gaza in response to rockets fired from Gaza into Israel.
 
Instead of using crushing military force in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Israel chose to negotiate its national interests in one and another international meeting. Compare China in relation to Taiwan, to Tibet, to the Spratly Islands, or to the Paracel Islands, none of which is permitted by China to be negotiated in an international meeting. The two-state solution is not applied by China to Tibet or to Taiwan.
 
The losing posture of Israel is not the posture of China, which annexed Tibet in 1950. In the decades since, there were sinofication of Tibet and strong measures against the Tibetan population. Tibet remains Chinese, under Chinese sovereignty, and the world accepts that circumstance.
 
Compare Russia in relation to Finnish territory taken by Russia during World War II, Japanese islands taken by Russia at the end of World War II, and Chechnia, none of which is permitted by Russia to be negotiated in an international meeting. The two-state solution is not applied by Russia to Chechnia.

The losing posture of Israel is not the posture of Russia, which fought two wars against Chechnia (1994-1996; 1999-2000). The wars were real wars, not Israeli-style quarter-measures. Thousands of Chechnians were killed by the Russians. Half of Grozny was leveled by the Russians. There was neither creation of a potentially-sovereign population nor creation of a potentially-sovereign Chechnia. Finnish territory, Japanese islands and Chechnia remain Russian, under Russian sovereignty, and the world accepts that circumstance.

Compare India and Pakistan in relation to Jammu and Kashmir. Neither India nor Pakistan permits negotiation of the dispute in an international meeting. The two-state solution is not applied by India or by Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir.
The losing posture of Israel is not the posture of India or of Pakistan, which fought three wars (1947; 1965; 1999). Real wars, not Israeli-style quarter-measures. There is no potentially-sovereign population of Jammu and Kashmir, and there is no potentially-sovereign Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan each retains sovereignty of its respective part of Jammu and Kashmir, and the world accepts that circumstance.

In light of history, it is strange for the United States to encourage Israel to negotiate its interests in an international meeting, and it is strange for the United States to support the two-state "solution" vis-à-vis Israel. When, in 1861, southern states of the United States seceded from the Union, the United States did not negotiate its national interest at an international conference. The United States did not entertain a two-state solution in relation to the Confederate States.
 
Rather, the United States denied entirely the right of the southern states to secede and to form the Confederate States. The United States fought to a complete victory over the Confederate States and its population.

"International law" has a private aspect (e.g., treaties concerning commercial relations) and a public aspect (e.g., treaties between countries). There is no "public international law" any more than there is an "international community." The sole use which the "international community" has for "public international law" is as a club with which to clobber Israel (mutatis mutandis, the United States). For example, around September 20, 2007, there was a declaration by Israel that Gaza is a "hostile territory." Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated that the declaration violates "public international law." The statement was made within a day of the Israeli declaration. Mr. Ban spent no time researching "public international law," and he did not offer a citation supportive of his statement. He manufactured that notion of "public international law" for the purpose of condemning a defense by Israel of itself.

It is asserted that "public international law" requires a two-state solution detrimental to Israel. There is no assertion by the "international community" that "public international law" requires a two-state solution detrimental to Spain or to France, concerning the Basque country, or requires a two-state solution detrimental to the Philippines, concerning Mindanao. Ditto for a two-state solution on Cyprus (Greeks and Turks), to the detriment of Cyprus; in Georgia (each of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), to the detriment of Georgia; and on Sri Lanka (Sinhalese and Tamils), to the detriment of Sri Lanka.
 
Jordanian Arabs occupy Judea and Samaria, and Egyptian Arabs occupy Gaza, yet the "international community" perceives the rightful Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria as an "occupation," as it did the former Israeli presence in Gaza. It is said over and over that the rightful presence is an "occupation," and against "public international law." Nothing at all is said about the United Kingdom contravening "public international law" by occupying Northern Ireland; or about Spain contravening "public international law" by occupying the Canary Islands, Melilla, and Ceuta; or about India contravening "public international law" by occupying Goa, Daman and Diu.
 
The two-state "solution" is a bill of goods, bought by Israel at a heavy price: thousands of post-1948, pre-1967 murders of Jews at the hands of Arabs, the throwing away of the post-1967 peace, and thousands of post-1967 murders of Jews at the hands of Arabs. The bill of goods is not yet paid in full by Israel. Despite the refusal by Israel to win the win two intifadas, and despite the disowning by Israel of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, Israel will be expected, at a forthcoming international meeting, to make the "painful concessions" that the Golan Heights is Arab, that the Sheba'a Farms is Arab, that the essential part of Jerusalem is Arab, and that the Temple Mount is Arab.
 
The two-state "solution," if implemented, would find a vulnerable Israel, hemmed in by an non-rational border, and surrounded by a Hamas-controlled Gaza, a radicalized post-Abbas "Palestine," an Assad-controlled Syria, and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. A coordinated ground attack from those four Arab quarters, coupled with a rain of rockets from Iran, would give rise to the Final Pogrom, the inevitable endgame of the two-state "solution."

  The Jihadist Candidate
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Posted by Israel Insider on October 18, 2008
http://israelinsider.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=2018399%3ATopic%3A10502

Last week, Barack Obama's campaign was burned yet again for its dalliance with Islamists - those who embrace Islam's repressive theo-political-legal code known as Shariah and who are working for its triumph in the West in general and the United States in particular. The episode is but the latest indication that the Democratic candidate hopes to win the White House by relying, in part, on the Jihadist vote.

NBC reported Thursday that the Obama campaign's latest radical "Muslim outreach coordinator," Mouha Husaini, met last month in one of Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs - the heart of what has been dubbed the "Wahhabi Corridor" - with her predecessor, Mazen Asbahi (who had to resign this summer due to his own associations with Shariah). Even more problematic was the presence at the Springfield event of two prominent Muslim Brotherhood operatives: Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society (MAS) and Nihad Awad of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

As I pointed out in a debate on Tuesday (transcript is here) with a man associated with both organizations and arguably the Bush administration's senior Muslim official, Suhail Khan, the Brotherhood is an instrument the Islamists have been using to foster a Fifth Column in America. Its stated purpose in this country is to "destroy Western civilization from within."

According to NBC, even other attendees expressed concern that the Obama campaign was reaching out to such "politically radioactive" individuals as Messrs. Bray and Awad.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the only association of this type. Others include the following:

-- A Federal Election Commission (FEC) employee has reportedly been warning for months about evidence that the Obama campaign has received as much as $200 million almost half of his total donations, in amounts less than $200. That is below the threshold for donor information Mr. Obama has chose to report to the FEC - unlike the Clinton and McCain campaigns which have reported all donor information.

Of the $200 million, between $30 million and $100 million are from the Mideast, Africa and other places Islamists are active. It is unclear whether - as seems likely - these funds come not only from Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood types and jihadists of other stripes but from non-U.S. citizens. Such contributions would be not only worrying but illegal.

Although the FEC has studiously ignored the problem to date, the matter finally appears to be the subject of a formal complaint by the Republican National Committee. Unfortunately, even if the commission finally bestirs itself to investigate the facts, it seems unlikely to render a finding before the jihadists' and others' votes are counted.

-- Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii. There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian. If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.

Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.

-- Then there is the Democratic candidate's get-out-the-vote effort. In addition to the prospect that its "Arab-Americans for Obama" effort is recruiting Muslim Brotherhood elements to enhance turnout, the Obama campaign is trolling for voters in problematic places. Some are felons in prison systems long used by Islamists as centers for recruiting converts to their causes.

Some - thanks to a radical group known as ACORN with which Barack Obama has had ties for many years and that has a serial problem with vote-registration fraud - are homeless. Their attitude toward the Islamist agenda, or for that matter any other aspect of national policy, can only be surmised.

-- Finally, there are the various well-known Islamists with whom Barack Obama has long had ties and/or who are actively promoting his campaign. These include: a former Black Panther convert to radical Islam who calls himself Khalid al-Mansour; an aggressive promoter of Wahhabi influence operations, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; a virulently anti-Israel and pro-suicide bomber Palestinian professor named Rashid Khalidi; and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who in a speech last February called Sen. Obama "the messiah".

Even Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has got into the act, describing Mr. Obama in a videotaped speech transcribed by MEMRI as "a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim" (Philip Berg's contention) and declares ominously that "people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa ... may even have been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to Obama."

The next three weeks afford the American people - and the media, the courts and the FEC - an opportunity to get to the bottom of Barack Obama's ties to and affinity for jihadists who have their own reasons for relishing his promise of "change" for this country. Unfortunately, the change his Islamists supporters have in mind is for global theocratic rule under Shariah, and the end of our constitutional, democratic government.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist.

  The View from Here
OBAMA -- THE TEFLON PRESIDENT
By Barry Shaw

With only days until the U.S. Presidential Elections Barack Obama has a clear advantage in all the leading polls. With voting less than three weeks away it seems that only a seismic event will reverse this trend and prevent Barack Obama from reaching the White House.

He was little known before he set out on his ambitious journey to be the head of the free world. The people of America, and interesting observers world wide, have come to learn something about the man, his personal history, the people who have influenced his political thinking, and the fire that has forged his ambition to take charge of the political life of Americans and, by default, the world.

He has led a glittering and impressive campaign. Yet, to a neutral eye, there have been a series of worrying, even dangerous, facts that have come to light that question who, truthfully, is Barack Obama, and what does he really stand for.

His history of association and close contact with murky characters does not seem to have affected the majority of voters in America.
In another world one would say that a life spent in the company of influential people demonstrate the mindset, motivation, and future policy of a Presidential candidate. This theory does not seem to have been applied to Obama.

The list of players linked to Obama would have led to an early defeat for any other candidate. Obama seems to float above the stench, oblivious and unaffected by the associations. Seemingly he is Teflon coated.

Worrying even more, is the Three Monkeys attitude adopted by Obama supporters. Whenever facts have been exposed they close their ears and eyes in the 'Hear no evil, See no evil' pose. Instead they accuse the opposing camp of negative campaigning and detracting from the leading issue, namely the economy.

But, eventually, important facts must be courageously faced. By not doing so now, Americans could find themselves with a default President leading their country in a direction which will be abhorrent to them and the free world.

There is some doubt over the issue of Obama's birth. One of the three basic conditions inscribed in the US Constitution is that a presidential candidate must be born in the United States. Obama was born in Kenya. His grandmother, older brother and sister were in attendance. His grandmother, to this day, proudly boasts about her successful grandson born in her country.

He claims that he was born in Honolulu, but he has refused to offer up the essential documentation to prove his birth. Why not? This document would clearly lay to rest a constitutional issue if it proved that he was a natural born citizen. Instead a lawyer, Philip J.Berg, is bringing a petition to the Supreme Court forcing Obama to produce his birth certificate that would clearly show that he was born within the United States.

It is incredible that this basic tenant has not been strictly observed. It seems that the fact that Obama's Presidency may be unconstitutional does not disturb the majority of voters.

Frank Marshall Davis was Obama's early mentor in his days in Hawaii. Davis believed in, and outlined, the Communist plan to take over America from within.
This would be done by installing educators at all levels of the education system, gaining control of the media, getting liberal judges appointed, training and financing people to be elected to public office from local level all the way up to the White House.

Davis had a decisive influence on Barack Obama.

Davis put Obama in contact with the Socialist Party in Chicago. William Ayres was a member of this New Party. Barack Obama joined in 1996. By 1999, the New Party was defunct after losing a Supreme Court challenge that ruled the organization as unconstitutional. By that time, the New Party had gotten Barack Obama and others elected to local office.

Today the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic National Congress have attempted to cover up and deny any ties between Obama and these socialist organizations, but they do exist.

During his days as a radical local politician a flag showing the portrait of Che Gevara hung prominently in his office.

Obama has tried to deny being influenced by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the ranting radical preacher of Black Liberation Theology. He has not, however, been questioned on how the writings of James. H. Cone, have influenced his political thought process. Cone advocated radical, even revolutionary, black racist action -- the same Black Liberation Theology incited by Wright.

Barack Obama was financially assisted by a Khalid al-Mansour, who has been described as a Black Nationalist and Black Muslim. Mansour who was an influential figure and mentor of the infamous Black Panther movement in the 1960s. Obama know Mansour. He was influenced by him, and assisted by him.

Mansour's funds came from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal. Bin-Talal is the man who blamed America for 9/11 because of their pro-Israeli policies. Rudy Guliani refused to accept bin-Talal's cheque for $10 million to help rebuild Manhattan.

Regarding Israel, it is clear from the people whose names have been touted in the past by Obama's team that an Obama Administration would swing away from support for the Jewish state. A short list of foreign policy people close to Obama demonstrates a pro-Palestinian bent. Some examples are Samantha Powers, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama who is quoted as favouring sacrificing millions of dollars to Israel in favour of giving it to Palestinians, and creating a force against the Israeli I.D.F. She was fired after making derogatory remarks about Hilary Clinton.

Obama was forced to fire Robert Malley after he had regular meetings with members of Hamas. In a tight presidential campaign, it would have been embarrassing and a vote-loser to keep close contacts with Malley.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is someone who Obama called "an outstanding friend and one from whom I have learned a lot." This foreign policy advisor to Obama has a long track record of being anti-Israel.

From his Chicago days, Obama is closely linked to Rashid Khalidi. This Chicago professor has justified suicide bombings if executed against Israelis. He also favours a bi-national state, rather than a two state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Yet Obama said of him, "He is a constant reminder to me of my own blind spots".

What is this if not an admission of an influence to his political development?

At an AIPAC gathering Obama declared that he stands for a "Jerusalem undivided". Yet, the next day when criticized by pro-Palestinians he said, "My words were poorly chosen." One must decide between remarks thrown to garner votes, and true intentions. True intentions can be evidenced by the people Obama has around him.
On foreign policy, his running mate, Joe Biden, is put forward as a friend of Israel. Yet Biden's record deserves close scrutiny. Joe Biden was one of only 16 senators who voted against a bill that would add Iran's Revolutionary Guards to the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations, because of it's involvement in murdering U.S. troops in Iraq.

Biden's pro-Iranian record goes further. Rather than sanction Iran, Biden advocates that the U.S. should offer Iran a greater role in Iraq's internal affairs.

Joe Biden's decision to address the American-Iranian Council, and other pro-Tehran groups, has angered many American-Iranians, as well as Israel.

Biden's ties to the pro-Iranian regime lobby are a matter of conviction, rather than accident or opportunity. When criticized for attending a fundraiser organized on his behalf by an Iranian Muslim charity in California, Biden ignored their concerns and attended the event on 19 February 2002.

At this event Biden delivered a speech in which he criticized President Bush's State of the Union address which identified Iran as being part of the Axis of Evil.

With Obama in the White House, and with Joe Biden as Vice President, what chance does Israel have of and Obama/Biden administration exerting sanctions on Iran?

Obama's Stations of the Cross leading him to his Calvary are replete with statements and actions that are troubling.

In his book 'Dreams of my Father' he wrote of his white mother, "I found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race".

In his book 'Audacity of Hope' he wrote, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

These published racist remarks and political intention statements should cause many deep reservations about the man who would be president.
He refused to wear the American pin early in his campaign. He failed to put his hand on his heart during the national anthem. His wife's careless remark about it being the first time she was proud to be an American when he defeated Hilary Clinton is in line with the "God damn America" of her pastor, the Reverend Wright.

Taken individually, they may be meaningless. Put together, they expose a thread that is reflects the inner thoughts and feelings of the couple that may soon be residing in the White House.

If the economy really is the main issue on which American's will choose their next President, Obama's role with Freddie Mac, Fanny May, and his involvement with ACORN, and the subsequent fallout that is the current financial crisis, needs to be addressed. His participation in these companies and organizations activities, have not shown him to be a financial expert. At a minimum he clearly does not understand economics. On a more serious note his political agenda, when linked to financial activities as reflected in the Freddie/Fanny/ACORN loan scandals, is a proven disaster.

When the election campaign is over, and Obama is seated in the Oval Office, in what direction will he take America?

Will the politics of Frank Marshall Davis, William Ayres, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, James.H.Cone, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, be reflected in the White House? He may be portrayed as a Liberal, but his associates have been radical left wing figures.

His close links to these people may be excused as poor judgment, or minimized as part of a damage control exercise. They may also be exposed as the deliberate forging of a political philosophy and action plan that is about to descend on America.

To many, his campaign has been one of stealth, putting out a message acceptable to Americans while disguising the true purpose of his mission. Those eager for change have dismissed criticism of him. This is allowing Obama to sail through to the White House without having these dubious and dangerous links, suspect political and religious influences, properly addressed by him or the American people.

It may be too late when the man becomes President Barack Hussein Obama of the United States of America.

  The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Column One: The disappearance of law in Acre
Oct. 16, 2008
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST

The Arab pogrom in Acre on Yom Kippur was yet another wake-up call. The 200 Israeli Arabs who shattered the windshields of 110 Jewish cars, and burned and looted dozens of Jewish businesses in the city on the eve of Yom Kippur while shouting out, "Death to Jews!" "Allah Akbar!" and "We'll kill you if you leave your homes!" couldn't have made their point any more clearly.

They don't like Jews. They don't want peaceful coexistence with Israel. They don't recognize the authority of Israel's laws. They don't accept their identity as Israeli citizens.

If the actual violence wasn't enough to clarify matters, then we have the invitations for the Arab theater festival that began on Thursday, and its program.

Acre's Arab leaders decided to organize their festival in response to Mayor Shimon Lancry's decision to postpone indefinitely Acre's annual Alternative Theater Festival. Fearing continued violence, Lancry opted over the weekend to postpone the annual event that was scheduled to take place this week.

The Arabs called their festival, "Acre Is Not Alone." In the invitations distributed to the Arab residents of the city, the organizers wrote: "We will not surrender to the emergency laws that were enacted after the settlers' [that is, the Jewish residents of the city's] attacks. The settlers are trying to enact an ethnic cleansing of the eastern neighborhoods of the city. We call on Acre's Arab residents to come to the Old City and break the siege that has been enacted against the merchants there. We are organizing these activities to preserve the importance of Acre as a center of Palestinian tourism, culture, history and geography."

So in short, "Acre is not Alone" has been organized to raise Arab awareness of Arab suffering at the hands of the Jews in Israel. Its main attractions include a movie that portrays the Arab riots in October 2000 from the perspective of the families of the Arab rioters killed by police trying to quell their violence against Jews; a one-man play fulminating on the victimization of Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian Authority by Jews; and an "artistic" narration of the plight of an Arab who left Acre in 1948 as a result of Jewish "aggression," and died in a UN camp in Lebanon. It is important to pause for a moment and set out as precisely as possible what happened in Acre on the eve of Yom Kippur and the following night, after the holiday ended.

On Wednesday night, when as is customary, after prayers ended Jews milled about in the streets that were empty of moving cars out of respect for the holiday, Acre resident Jamal Tawfik drove into the city's predominantly Jewish Ben-Gurion neighborhood. Jewish residents claim that Tawfik was driving at high speed with his windows down and music blasting out of his speakers, in a clear provocation of the Jews. Tawfik denied the allegations. By all accounts, some Jewish youth approached his car. Some accounts claim that a handful of teenagers hit the sides of his car. Some accounts claim that some teenagers pelted his car with stones. All accounts agree that he exited his vehicle unscathed.

Just after this altercation, a still-unidentified Arab in the Old City broadcast that a Jewish mob had murdered Tawfik via the loudspeakers of a mosque. More than 200 Arab residents then descended on the Ben-Gurion neighborhood with axes and knives. They shattered the windshields of some 110 Jewish-owned cars. They then moved into the business district and looted and vandalized the Jewish-owned stores and businesses. Despite multiple calls for help from terrified Jews, it took the police several hours to appear on the scene. And when they arrived, they did nothing to end the Arab rampage.

The next evening, after the holiday ended, the Jewish residents started a spontaneous protest against the Arab riot. Arab rioters returned. This time, the police, equipped with riot gear, succeeded in separating the Arabs from the Jews. A group of Jewish protesters, demanding revenge, torched a handful of Arab-owned apartments in mixed neighborhoods. The Arabs continued looting Jewish businesses and attacking Jewish cars. Police arrested rioters on both sides.

In the days that followed, Arab leaders published condemnations of violence "on both sides," and asked Jewish leaders to join them in their statements. Most Jewish leaders in the city refused. As Acre's Chief Rabbi Yoseph Yashar told a reporter, "As long as they speak of the Arab rioters from the eve of Yom Kippur in the same breath as the acts of vengeance carried out by Jews in response, it will be very hard to calm matters down." On the national political level, Kadima and Labor party leaders have embraced the Arabs' moral equivalence. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their subordinates have all decried "acts of violence" and "lawlessness," while refraining from making any special mention of the fact that the violence was carried out almost entirely by Acre's Arabs.

Olmert went further than his colleagues. During a meeting with anti-Israel activists from the Arab sector, including the deputy head of the Hamas-linked northern branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement on Monday, Olmert claimed, "There can be no doubt that for years the Arab population has suffered from discrimination that stemmed from a variety of sources." By making the statement to some of the most extreme anti-Israel voices in Israeli Arab society, Olmert seemingly justified the lawlessness of their followers.

The police have reacted to the Arab violence with now customary passivity. Decrying the police's belated and feckless response to Wednesday night's violence, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz minced no words: "The public security minister [Avi Dichter] and the chief of police [David Cohen] must resign. The State of Israel has become the only country in the Western world where pogroms are carried out against Jews. Physical assaults are carried out against them and against their property amid calls of 'Death to the Jews.' A police force that is incapable of defending Jewish neighborhoods requires a serious overhaul."

WHILE STARTLING, the events in Acre - and the official response to them - are not new phenomena. Last Yom Kippur, an Arab driver from Shibli in the Galilee mortally wounded nine-year-old Tal Zino from neighboring Kfar Tavor. The driver entered the community at top speed on his all-terrain vehicle. Children playing outside the synagogue ran to evade him. Tal couldn't get out of his way fast enough. He ran her over.

As Tal's mother, Haya Zino, told Ma'ariv last Friday, that incident was the first attack against Jews carried out by an Arab operating a heavy motor vehicle. In her view, the more recent murders of Jews in Jerusalem by Arab bulldozer operators are simply a continuation of the attack on Kfar Tavor that killed her daughter.

Two years ago, an Arab mob in Acre violently attacked yeshiva students dancing in the streets on Simhat Torah. The students were forced to flee to their yeshiva, where the Arabs then besieged them. Rather than disperse the crowd, the police simply helped the students escape to their homes through the yeshiva's backdoor.

And in the riots in Peki'in earlier in October 2007, the police refused to confront the Arab mob that attacked the Jewish homes in the village. They allowed a policewoman to be held hostage for several hours and essentially begged anti-Israeli local leaders to intervene on her behalf.

THE EVER-INCREASING radicalism of Israeli Arabs, who today openly and officially oppose the existence of the Jewish state, shows the imbecility of the government's plan to "separate" from the Palestinians by withdrawing from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Given that Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs openly identify themselves as one society, there is no way to separate from the Palestinians. But the fact that Israeli Arabs are indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs does not mean that there is no way to contend with their rejection of Israel. To the contrary, it points to the only way to contend with both the Palestinian Arab and the Israeli Arab rejection of Israel: By reestablishing law and order and respect for the law both within the 1949 armistice lines and in the areas Israel took control of in 1967.

Here, it is worth pointing out that in their rejection of the authority of Israel, the Israeli Arab rioters in Acre are little different from the French Muslim rioters who set their country ablaze in November 2005. In both cases, the rioters demonstrated their abject contempt and rejection of the state in which they live, at the same time that their governments were doing everything in their power to appease them as a suffering minority. Responding to the violence, French voters elected President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy campaigned on a law and order platform. Sadly, since taking office, he has done little to abide by his campaign pledges in this regard.

In Israel's case, no political leaders have made the connection between law and order and Israeli Arab or Palestinian Arab irredentism. Indeed, since the Arab riots in 2000, Israel has simply stopped enforcing its laws in the Arab sector. This is true not only with regard to violent crimes and treason, but also in relation to lesser offenses. For instance, polygamy is illegal in Israel. Yet, over the past decade, the prevalence of polygamy among Israeli Beduin has grown to unprecedented levels.

Last spring the government announced its intention to contend with the issue by forming committees and support groups for children of polygamous marriages and women who are involved in these illegal relationships. No thought was given to the obvious remedy of arresting the polygamous husbands and trying them for their crimes.

And this gets to the heart of the matter. While no doubt, historically, Israel has witnessed discrimination against members of its Arab sector, today, the chief form of discrimination they suffer is what US President George W. Bush has referred to as "the soft bigotry of low expectations." This of course causes both Israeli Jews and Arabs to feel contempt for the law and so increases the tendency of both Jews and Arabs to take the law into their own hands.

But more important, the pro-Arab discrimination of Israel's political and law enforcement arms has facilitated the radicalization of Arab Israeli society. Far from appeasing them, Israel has shown them that they are right to reject its authority. And their rejection of Israel - like their Palestinian Arab brethren's rejection of Israel - only increases as Israel seeks to appease them. By opting not to assert its authority over Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, by refraining from punishing their lawlessness and aggression against Jews, and even rewarding it, Israel guarantees that yet more dangerous attacks will soon follow.

caroline@carolineglick.com This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017555421&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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 Column One: Running against Bush
Oct. 30, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

In recent months, conservative commentators have devoted countless words to the American media's open bias in favor of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. Although there is no question that their criticism is accurate, it is wrong to root that bias merely in the media's leftist sympathies.
 
The American media's pro-Obama bias is also the consequence of their misrepresentation of outgoing President George W. Bush's record in office. And that misrepresentation, too, cannot be ascribed merely to the leftist sympathies of the media. For the media are not the source of that misrepresentation, Bush is.
 
Bush's record in office is the key issue in the campaign. The outgoing president's abysmal approval ratings in his last two years in power caused both parties to recognize that to win the election, their candidate had to distinguish himself as much as possible from the current occupant of the Oval Office.
 
In selecting Sen. John McCain as their party's nominee, the Republicans adopted this approach. Throughout his long career in Congress, McCain has served as the consummate party outsider. Yet, in his own way, and now to his detriment, he has also been loyal. And so until recently he avoided attacking Bush outright, preferring instead to ignore him.
 
But by ignoring the president, McCain gave Obama full freedom to define Bush's presidency in the manner that best advanced his electoral prospects. And Obama's success in defining Bush has enabled the Democratic nominee to set the terms of debate on the central issue of the campaign: how America finds itself in the situation it now finds itself, and what policies should be adopted to improve it.
 
Obama has successfully cast Bush's presidency as a repeat of Ronald Reagan's. Obama has portrayed Bush's foreign policy as a reenactment of Reagan's muscular, pro-American foreign policy, which was based on Reagan's belief in American exceptionalism and his willingness to disregard what America's enemies and erstwhile allies thought of US actions. Obama has also portrayed Bush's economic policies as a reenactment of Reagan's policies of free market capitalism characterized by deregulation and tax cuts.
 
Obama has claimed that European and Muslim estrangement from the US; the increased strength of the insurgency in Afghanistan; Russian aggression; the resilience of the insurgency in Iraq; Iran's unimpeded drive toward nuclear weapons; and every other major US foreign policy problem are the consequences of Bush's embrace of Reagan's foreign policy approach. Obama claims that the financial crisis, too, is a consequence of Bush's Reaganesque tax cuts and his general embrace of supply-side economics and the conservative preference for limited government.

By so defining Bush's record in office, Obama has been able to make a case for his own policies, which are diametrically opposed to those he ascribes to Bush.
 
THERE IS only one problem with Obama's description of Bush's record. It is utterly false.

During his first term, Bush's foreign policy was raft with internal contradictions and intellectual confusion. Books have been written about the two competing factions in Bush's inner circle. Vice President Richard Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld championed a Reaganesque model of statecraft. And opposing them, secretary of state Colin Powell pushed for a UN-centered, European-style foreign policy more similar to the one adopted by Bush's father.
 
Throughout his first term, Bush refused to side with one or the other of the factions. Instead he tried to simultaneously implement two mutually exclusive foreign policies. His indecisiveness rendered his foreign policy intellectually incoherent and doomed much that he did to failure. Bush's speechwriters were evidently more sympathetic to the Cheney-Rumsfeld view and so many of his speeches during his first term echoed Reagan's soaring rhetoric. But on the ground, Bush's policies adhered much more closely to Powell's program.
 
This intellectual disarray was perhaps nowhere more evident than in Bush's refusal to define the enemy in the war. The men who attacked the US on September 11, 2001, were more than simply terrorists. They had a plan and a cause: They were Muslim jihadists. And they were not the ideological fringe of the Islamic world. Their beliefs are propagated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and are advanced in the most prestigious academies in the Islamic world.
 
By claiming that the enemy in the war is generic "terror" rather than a worldview embraced by millions of people throughout the Islamic world, Bush made it impossible for his advisers to develop a coherent strategy for war. He also denied the American people the tools necessary for understanding either the meaning of the struggle or the necessity of fighting it. He deprived the public of the basic intellectual framework for understanding for instance why he decided to imprison terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
 
Bush's two-headed foreign policy made it difficult for the public to recognize that the war being waged against the US and its allies in Iraq is not simply an Iraqi struggle, but a battlefield in a regional war fueled by neighboring regimes. His intellectual confusion blinded him to the fact that his democracy agenda was harmed, not advanced, by holding popular elections in which jihadists - whose views and aspirations are inimical to the notion of human freedom - were permitted to participate.
 
In Bush's second term in office, and particularly since the Republican defeat in the 2006 Congressional elections, Bush abandoned the intellectual incoherence of his first term in favor of a full embrace of Powell's policy preferences now championed by his successor, Condoleezza Rice. Throughout his entire first term, and due to his refusal to adjudicate between two contradictory foreign policy visions, Bush failed to adopt any policy toward Iran. After the 2006 Congressional elections, Bush embraced the Powell-Rice policy of European style appeasement. This has been demonstrated most recently by his stated plan to open a US embassy in Teheran.
 
Bush's wholesale adoption of the Powell-Rice appeasement policy is also reflected in his policies toward North Korea and the Palestinians. And this week, according to statements by White House officials, he stands ready to apply it toward the Taliban, with whom he is considering opening ties.

In Bush's last two years in office, the only surviving remnant of the Cheney-Rumseld Reaganesque foreign policy has been Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. And in spite of its military success, the fact that this policy is contradicted by the president's policy everywhere else casts doubt on the durability of America's victories on the ground.
 
BUSH'S ACCEPTANCE of the Powell-Rice foreign policy doctrine has not been widely recognized. In large part this has been due to Bush's own refusal to tell the public that he has in fact embraced appeasement. Moreover, his reluctance to come clean with the public has been exacerbated by the media's denial of the change.
 
Whether due to blindness fed by an underlying hostility toward the president, or to ignorance of the significance of Bush's policies, the media have failed to report that Bush's policies today are a repudiation of the ideals and policies Bush gave voice to in his speeches during his first term. Those effectively repudiated speeches were the embodiment of Reagan's foreign policy doctrine.
 
The same pattern has been followed in popular characterizations of Bush's economic policies.

Aside from his tax cuts in his first term - cuts that include a "sunset" provision rendering them temporary measures rather than enduring tax reforms - Bush's economic policies during his two terms have been anything but Reaganesque. Bush has vastly increased the size of the federal government, and he has introduced massive new regulation into the US economy.
 
Emblematic of Bush's eschewal of Reagan's legacy on both foreign policy and economic levels is his newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The establishment of this new position - and the large bureaucracy supporting it - was how Bush chose to contend with US intelligence agencies' failure to foresee and prevent the September 11 attacks.
 
But like most failures in governance, the failure to anticipate, uncover and prevent those attacks was not due to an absence of bureaucracy. Rather, the failure stemmed from the ideologically-driven unwillingness of the directors of the FBI and the CIA to recognize the threat of al-Qaida and focus their efforts on tracking and capturing al-Qaida members and sympathizers. The proper response to that failure would have been to fire the heads of those agencies and replace them with people who understood the nature of the threat and were capable of contending with it.
 
Instead Bush decided to increase the size of the government, add a new layer of bureaucracy to the failed intelligence community and staff it with people of the same mindset as those who had failed to anticipate, expose and prevent the September 11 attacks. Not surprisingly, the newly appointed, ideologically uniform bureaucrats continued to underestimate the threats of jihadists and to fail to pay attention to any new significant trends in other areas.
 
It was this failed bureaucratic groupthink that produced the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program last year. That report, with its demonstrably false assertion that Teheran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, scuttled all of Bush's efforts to use economic sanctions to dissuade the Islamic Republic from building nuclear bombs and pulled the rug out from under any plan to take military action against Iran's nuclear installations in the event of the sanctions' failure.
 
So, too, led by officials of limited intellectual curiosity and blinding ideological cowardice now sitting atop a new bureaucracy, US intelligence agencies failed to anticipate or prevent Russia's invasion of Georgia.

Bush's establishment of the behemoth Department of Homeland Security was yet another attempt to solve a personnel problem by creating yet another department. And just as the National Intelligence Directorate has failed to solve the problems it was created to contend with, so the Department of Homeland Security has simply continued the same failed immigration policies and domestic intelligence policies that caused the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI to fail to identify and arrest the September 11 hijackers.
 
In short, both in foreign and domestic affairs, Bush's record is completely at odds with Reagan's record in office. Indeed, his policies have been far more similar to those that Obama - who runs as the anti-Reagan - promises to advance than to those that Reagan adopted.
 
AND THIS is the great irony of the campaign season. By failing to accurately represent his policies to the public, Bush invited Obama to misrepresent his record and so wrongly ascribe Bush's failures to policies he never adopted - much less implemented. By failing to correct Obama's misrepresentation of Bush's actual record, McCain has allowed Obama to characterize him as the candidate who would continue the Bush presidency, when the fact is that the small-government policies and the relatively robust foreign policy positions that McCain has adopted render him the candidate most unlike the sitting president.
 
If Obama wins the elections on Tuesday, his victory will find its roots not in media bias, but in Bush's insistent misrepresentation of his record as president.
 
caroline@carolineglick.com

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1225199612962&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull