Caroline Glick has a new commentary that is a must read; below are a few quotes, but this one should be read in full:
As was the case with Obamacare, the White House knows that most Americans won’t support its policy of doing nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So the White House never says that this is its policy. Obama and his advisers insist that preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is a central goal of the administration. But their actions move US policy in the opposite direction. And if they get caught on the lies after Iran gets the bomb, well, Obama won’t be facing reelection, so he will pay no price for his duplicity.
The events of the past week make clear that the stakes in understanding and exposing his game couldn’t be higher.
Three major developments occurred this week.
The Palestinian document claims not only all of Judea and Samaria, (except for 1.9 percent of the territory that Israel can keep in exchange for money and more land within sovereign Israel), and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem. It demands the northern Negev, the Hula Valley, Latrun and the Elah Valley. And it demands them all free of all Jewish presence.
They demand that Israel relinquish its rights under international law to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem by agreeing that they are “occupied.”
They demand full control over the airspace over Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem, and over the waters off the Gaza coast. They demand an end of air force overflights of those areas.
They demand control over all the underground aquifers, and over the electromagnetic spectrum.
Moreover, the Palestinians are demanding that Israel allow 5 million foreign-born Arabs the right to freely immigrate to its remaining territory.
They refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and claim they have sovereign rights over all of Israel.
The Palestinian document reveals that there is no chance whatsoever that the current negotiations will lead to peace. PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies don’t want peace. They want to destroy Israel.
And yet, to demonstrate Israel’s good faith with the cause of peace, and genuine devotion to the goal of appeasing Abbas, on Sunday the cabinet approved the release of another 26 Palestinian murderers from its jails. On Tuesday night, Abbas threw them a party in Ramallah and pledged that he would force Israel to release all Palestinian terrorists from its prisons.
Then there is Iran. Just as it did in 2011, before the US Senate and House passed veto-proof sanctions bills, the administration is aggressively fighting to block lawmakers from passing new sanctions against Iran. To this end, Obama’s national security advisers summoned American Jewish leaders to the White House to demand that they stop speaking in favor of intensified sanctions.
Also this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry took a swipe at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for daring to question the administration’s total commitment to negotiating with Iran. Kerry indignantly insisted, “We will not succumb to fear tactics” against holding talks with Iran.
The same day that Kerry decried Israel for supposedly sowing fear unnecessarily about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Olli Heinonen, the former deputy head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the Iranians may have already passed the breakout phase and have the
capacity to build an atomic weapons within two weeks.
But in accordance with the Obama administration’s wishes, Democrats in the Senate are now suggesting a four-month pause in sanctions deliberations to give Obama a chance to reach a deal.
Netanyahu and his colleagues have used the term “strategic interests” as a euphemism for American pressure. By using the term in the context of the freeing of murderers, Netanyahu and Ya’alon made clear that the US has blackmailed Israel into keeping up concessions to the PLO despite the fact that the concessions demoralize the country, destabilize the government, embolden terrorists determined to murder still more Jews, and encourage Abbas to escalate his support for terrorism and his diplomatic war against Israel.
Here, too, Obama has a track record. According to former national security adviser Giora Eiland, Netanyahu was poised to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in the fall of 2012, but Obama pressured him into standing down. It is hard to believe that Obama’s was a soft sell.
Then there is the issue of military sales. Government officials have whispered periodically that Obama is threatening to curtail weapons sales to Israel. Such a move could quickly paralyze the air force.
There is an argument to be made for keeping silent on the nature of Obama’s blackmail.
Exposing it would also expose the growing fissure between the US and Israel, and much of Israel’s deterrent posture is based on a widespread assessment that Israel’s strategic alliance with the US is unbreakable. But then again, Obama’s weakening of the US alliance with Israel – and with Saudi Arabia and Egypt – is well-known. The damage has already been done.
Given this, the argument for exposing the nature of Obama’s threats becomes more compelling by the day. Congress still plays a supervisory role in foreign policy. And the American public supports Israel deeply. There is a strong probability that if the nature of Obama’s threats is revealed, he will be forced to rescind them before Israel becomes the foreign corollary to the Americans whose health insurance Obama canceled.
Russian Bombers To Continue Patrols Over South America
Two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers currently on a tour-of-duty in South America will carry out a series of patrol missions over the region in line with the program of combat training, the Defense Ministry said.
The nuclear-capable bombers arrived in Venezuela on October 28 and conducted patrols over the Caribbean before landing in Nicaragua on Thursday.
“The crews are now resting and preparing for new missions. They are scheduled to carry out several patrols over the region,” Commander of the Russian Long-Range Aviation, Lt. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, said at a Defense Ministry meeting on Thursday.
The general did not provide details of the future missions or specify the patrol routes.
Russian strategic bombers previously conducted patrols over the Caribbean in 2008.
The meeting at the Defense Ministry summed up the results of the Wednesday snap checkof Russia’s nuclear deterrent on orders by President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. Administration Pushes For Delay On Iran Sanctions
Vice President Joe Biden and senior Obama administration officials convinced a number of senators on Thursday to hold off on another round of Iran sanctions as Western powers test Tehran’s willingness to scale back its nuclear aims.
The full-court press didn’t sway every senator who participated in the hours-long, closed-door briefing, but the chances that the Senate Banking Committee would draft new, punitive measures next week just as negotiations occurred in Geneva diminished significantly.
“As one member of the committee, my attitude is if something is going on that may lead to a positive result, let’s see where that ends up,” said Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb.
Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said the administration was “making a good case” for delaying another round of penalties although he said he had not made a decision.
Joining Biden in the discussions with Democratic leadership and committee members were Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a lineup that underscored the administration’s strong desire to get Congress to wait on a new package of penalties. Although the White House insists that tough sanctions have forced Iran to negotiate, it wants Congress to pause to give negotiators flexibility in talks with Iran.
Joining Biden in the discussions with Democratic leadership and committee members were Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a lineup that underscored the administration’s strong desire to get Congress to wait on a new package of penalties. Although the White House insists that tough sanctions have forced Iran to negotiate, it wants Congress to pause to give negotiators flexibility in talks with Iran.
“I like John Kerry, I got a lot of trust in John Kerry,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who explained that it might make sense for the committee to wait, finalize any legislation “and let them (the administration and Western powers) do their negotiations.”
Unnerving for the administration is the prospect that a Senate panel would be crafting new sanctions at the same time as Iran and six world powers meet in Geneva next week for another round of negotiations.
Several lawmakers emerging from the session argued that this is no time to let up on Tehran.
“I have to hear something far more substantive to dissuade me from being an advocate for pursuing a new round of sanctions,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has repeatedly sponsored tough sanctions legislation.
Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who has often partnered with Menendez, said his response to the administration’s intense lobbying was to keep pushing for sanctions, dismissing the latest talks with Tehran as “a long rope a dope.”
IAF Strikes In Southern Israel Gaza After 5 Soldiers Injured
One soldier was seriously wounded and another was in moderate condition Friday after an IDF operation Thursday night to destroy part of a tunnel, east of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, was targeted by Hamas. A total of five soldiers were injured when Hamas detonated an explosive device against the forces, the IDF said in a statement Friday.
The soldiers returned fire and “directly hit a terrorist,” the IDF said, adding that the Israeli Air Force then targeted another tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, confirming a direct hit. Palestinian sources said that three members of Hamas’s armed wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, were killed in the retaliation.
All five soldiers were evacuated via helicopter to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
Hamas-run TV in Gaza said that its forces laid out a “sophisticated” improvised explosive device (IED) for the soldiers, adding that this was a “slap in the face to those who claim the resistance is dead,” Israel’s Army Radio reported Friday morning.
The unemployment rate in the eurozone is higher than it has ever been before. This week we learned that eurozone unemployment came in at an all-time high of 12.2 percent for September. Back in January 2012, it was sitting at just10.4 percent. So anyone that believes that "things are getting better" in Europe is just being delusional. In fact, the economic depression in Europe just keeps getting deeper.
The funny thing is that the mainstream media will barely call what is going on in Europe a "recession" even though the unemployment rates in both Spain and Greece are now much higher than anything that the United States ever experienced during the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. There haven't been as many headlines about the financial crisis in Europe lately because the ECB has been papering over the debt problems of the periphery (at least for the moment), but the economic conditions on the ground for average Europeans just continue to get even worse. Later on in this article, you will read about a 25-year-old Spanish man with three college degrees that moved to London in a desperate search for a job who is now cleaning up poop for a living. The economic collapse of Europe continues to march on, and there is no end in sight.
As economic conditions continue to decline all over Europe, anger and frustration with the "European experiment" continue to grow. UKIP's Nigel Farage expressed these sentiments very eloquently during a speech on the 23rd of October when he stated that "what we are saying, large numbers of us from every single EU member state is: we don't want that flag, we don't want the anthem that you all stood so ram-rod straight for yesterday, we don't want EU passports, we don't want political union."
Unfortunately, the elite of Europe are so obsessed with their little experiment that the only "solutions" to these economic problems that they are even willing to consider involve even more European integration.
And Americans certainly should not be looking down their noses at what is happening in Europe.
What is going on in Italy, France, Spain and Greece will be coming here soon enough. In fact, even during the midst of this so-called "economic recovery", poverty continues to absolutely explode in the United States.
Economic conditions in both the United States and Europe have never even gotten close to where they were prior to 2008, and now the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.
This is just the beginning. Things are going to get much worse in the years ahead.
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