Who’s Up For A Caption Contest?

John Kerry, lame duck Secretary of State, has moved up the date of his intended speech on a Palestinian State to 11:00 AM this morning; a move no doubt intended to thwart efforts by the incoming Trump administration to act on Israel’s behalf while at the same time pushing back against Netanyahu.

For the last eight years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice have sought to rewrite the traditional approach to foreign policy.

When the Obama administration discovered that tragic human nature still governed foreign policy, it objected petulantly, insisting that an American messiah had come to save the world. The world, for some strange reason, was not impressed. Instead, it took advantage of the light-bringer’s childish narcissism.

We’re asking our readers to come up with a pithy caption to this photoshopped image of Barack as the hapless Deputy Barney Fife, snooty Francophile “Lurch” Le Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There will be three winners: first, second and third place.  Let’s make the effort to come up with an imaginative caption worth your while.  Second and third place will receive a $10 Amazon gift card.  First Place will receive a $25 gift card from Amazon and a spot on our sidebar as the Blog of the Week.

Contest ends at midnight Saturday, December 31^st.  The winners will be announced on Sunday, New Years Day. Good luck!

Don't miss Secretary Kerry's speech. The administration that caused more Middle East war than anyone will explain how to achieve peace.

— Josh Earnst (@NotJoshEarnest) December 28, 2016

"The only way to achieve Middle East peace is for everyone to give up their air conditioners"--Secretary Kerry, probably

— Josh Earnst (@NotJoshEarnest) December 28, 2016

Hi. I'm John Kerry. I stood by as 500,000 Syrians were killed. Now let me tell Israel what to do, because I am a moral midget.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 28, 2016

UPDATE 1-1-2017:  Our caption contest ended on New Year’s Eve and we are proud to announce the winners:

Pistol Pete is our First Place Winner—he will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card

Proof is our Second Place Winner—he will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card

Woodsterman is our Third Place Winner—he will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card

Congratulations guys.  Ya done good! 

UN Jackals And Their Atrocious Betrayal of Israel

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer has made two trips to Israel.  The first was July 24, 2008 as a presidential candidate to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, Judaism’s most holy site, and again as president in March 2013.

Jerusalem is the ancient capital of Israel and site of the original temple.  The Western Wall is where the Ten Commandments were stored in the Ark of the Covenant.  The Western Wall is also known as the Wailing Wall by Jews who make pilgrimages there to grieve the persecution of the Jewish people.

It was at the Western Wall that Obama left a note that read, “Lord—Protect my family and me.  Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair.  Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just.  And make me an instrument of your will.”  He vowed to forge an “unshakable bond” with Israel if he became the next president.

When he traveled to Israel again in 2013, his itinerary included a trip to Yad Vashem a living memorial to the Holocaust and to those who were “righteous among the nations”.  The “righteous” were those who summoned extraordinary courage to save the Jews from extermination by the Nazis.

“This is my second visit to this living memorial.  Since then, I’ve walked among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald.  Rabbi Lau told me of his time there, and we reminisced about our good friend, Elie Wiesel, and the memories that he shared with me.  I have stood in the old Warsaw ghetto, with survivors who would not go quietly. But nothing equals the wrenching power of this sacred place, where the totality of the Shoah is told.  We could come here a thousand times, and each time our hearts would break.”

“For here we see the depravity to which man can sink; the barbarism that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and of life.  We see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing, and how silence abetted a crime unique in human history.”

“Here we see their faces and we hear their voices.  We look upon the objects of their lives—the art that they created, the prayer books that they carried.  We see that even as they had hate etched into their arms, they were not numbers.  They were men and women and children—so many children—sent to their deaths because of who they were, how they prayed, or who they loved.”

“And yet, here, alongside man’s capacity for evil, we also are reminded of man’s capacity for good—the rescuers, the Righteous Among the Nations who refused to be bystanders.  And in their noble acts of courage, we see how this place, this accounting of horror, is, in the end, a source of hope.”

His soaring rhetoric and honeyed words betray his deep Palestinian ties.  To this day, The Los Angeles Times refuses to release the Rashid Khalidi tape they acquired surreptitiously which lays bare Mr. Obama’s disdain of Israel and his effusive support of Middle East radicals.  He is a political chameleon.

On December 23, 2016, Obama broke with the longstanding practice of both Democratic and Republican administrations to protect Israel from one-sided UN resolutions. He let the United Nations Security Council pass a resolution declaring the establishment of settlements by Israel “a flagrant violation under international law."

The resolution demands that "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." The Obama administration abstained rather than veto this resolution as it had done with regard to a similar resolution back in 2011.

It declares that any Jew who lives in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem which has been inhabited for a thousand years is illegal and in violation of international law. It is now the official position of the United States of America that the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians.

The Council passed the resolution, 14-0.  The countries voting for the resolution were Great Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal, New Zealand, Malaysia and, of course, the US by abstention.

Israel has accused Obama of colluding with the Palestinians against the Jewish state. The remaining question is whether Jewish leaders and Democratic politicians who vouched for Obama and defended him for eight years will now tell the truth.

The American taxpayer foots 22% of the total United Nations budget.  What we get for our three billion dollars a year is a corrupt organization whose dysfunctional and hostile agencies are united in opposing America around the world.

I wholeheartedly agree with Daniel Greenfield’s take on the UN:

“These days, the United Nations is a forum for Islamist powers and the rotting remains of the Communist front to continue its war against the free world while seducing weak-minded nations into going along.” 

“We are not making the world a better place by being members of this anti-American organization which vacillates between being evil and useless.”

Netanyahu: Telling The World The Truth About Those Who Seek Our Destruction

Watching Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address the 70th United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, his countenance seemed inexplicably restless as he reached for first one pair of glasses then exchanging them for another in his jacket breast pocket.

He gazed upon the audience noting the representatives of the nations assembled there walking out and the conspicuous absence of those who had already left the auditorium to boycott his speech.  That gesture was heralding what would follow a short time later in his speech.

On Monday, in her speech on the floor of the UN General Assembly, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner revealed that former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Gary Samore, attempted to convince Argentina to provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel to increase its nuclear capabilities.

According to Kirchner, when Samore was asked to provide the request in writing, all communication from the United States ceased. “This message was conveyed and I believe that was the last time, after that communication, that our Minister of Foreign Affairs saw Gary Samore.”

NOTE:  Buried within a press release issued in August of this year, UANI (United Against Nuclear Iran) announced its president, Mr. Samore, had resigned his post.  Responding to this bombshell, a senior administration official told The Blaze that “the fuel swap story is old news and was a confidence building gesture.”

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer finds America’s allegiance to Israel problematic because of Israel’s ferocious opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran.  In a speech at the American University in Washington he said, “I believe the facts support this deal.  I believe they are in America’s interests and Israel’s interests, and as President of the United States it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.”

Taken together, it is easy to understand the thundering rage expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as it becomes more and more clear that Israel stands alone and this president continues his humiliating treatment of our closest ally.

From an excerpt of his speech:

The vast majority of Israelis believe that this nuclear deal with Iran is a very bad deal. And what makes matters even worse is that we see a world celebrating this bad deal, rushing to embrace and do business with a regime openly committed to our destruction. 

[SKIP] 

Last month, Khamenei once again made his genocidal intentions clear before Iran’s top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts. He spoke about Israel, home to over six million Jews. He pledged, “there will be no Israel in 25 years.” 

Seventy years after the murder of six million Jews, Iran’s rulers promise to destroy my country. Murder my people. And the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here has been absolutely nothing! 

Utter silence! 

Deafening silence. 

(At this point, Netanyahu paused for 45 seconds panning the hall with a furrowing glare) 

Perhaps you can now understand why Israel is not joining you in celebrating this deal. If Iran’s rulers were working to destroy your countries, perhaps you’d be less enthusiastic about the deal. If Iran’s terror proxies were firing thousands of rockets at your cities, perhaps you’d be more measured in your praise. And if this deal were unleashing a nuclear arms race in your neighborhood, perhaps you’d be more reluctant to celebrate. 

But don’t think that Iran is only a danger to Israel. Besides Iran’s aggression in the Middle East and its terror around the world, Iran is also building intercontinental ballistic missiles whose sole purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Now remember this:  Iran already has missiles that can reach Israel. So those intercontinental ballistic missiles that Iran is building—they’re not meant for us—They’re meant for you. For Europe. For America. For raining down mass destruction—anytime, anywhere.
 

Curmudgeonly Cartoon: One Ringy-Dingy

Wow RT @IsaacDovere Reporter to Obama in Oval Office: "Have you called Prime Minister Netanyahu yet?" Obama: "Thank you everybody.”
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) March 19, 2015

Pres Obama also sent a Persian New Year's video to the people & leaders of Iran, urging them to embrace a deal barring nuclear weapons.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 20, 2015

At noon WH briefing today, look for @PressSec to be peppered with questions about Pres Obama's phone call yesterday with PM Netanyahu.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 20, 2015

Netanyahu Defeats Obama

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer was shellacked in the 2010 midterms and his Democrat Party suffered an electoral blowout in 2014 and the drubbing continued on Tuesday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud Party scored a resounding victory.

There will be no celebration in the Oval Office and Secretary of State John Kerry and the dozens of foolish Democrats who boycotted his historic speech before a joint session of Congress will now be forced to tuck their tails between their legs.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer has a seething disdain for PM Netanyahu.  That disdain motivated him to conspire to interfere in the democratic election of that nation.  He did so by “secretly” funding non-profit organizations that were hell-bent to replace Netanyahu’s government.

Hey, @SpeakerBoehner, why not invite @netanyahu back just to rub it in? #IsraelElections
— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) March 17, 2015

The enemies of liberty and the enemies of #Israel will have to wait another day. #IsraelElections http://t.co/wJnkFA3Vs8
— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) March 17, 2015

Stephen Kruiser suggests this:  

Expect the spinning to resemble the cartoon Tasmanian Devil by the morning. The last few days were absolutely polluted with stories about Netanyahu’s imminent political demise, with the most popular version of the tale being that he ruined his chances by angering great and powerful thin-skinned consumer of canines currently occupying the Oval Office. 

One does not hurt Barack Obama’s feelings without some backlash. 

Now that Obama has once again been revealed impotent in helping candidates not named Barack Obama to victory, his media petting zoo is out of sorts. They will be expending a lot of effort to explain exactly why this victory wasn’t really a victory.

Curmudgeonly Cartoon: The 98-Lb. Weakling

"Look! Down in the Polls! It's a Duck! And it's Lame!" *

 "Ant-Man or Anti-Man?"   *My apologies to the Adventures of Superman

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

The Day Of The Jackass

Composite of Associated Press photograph and Charlie Hebdo caricatures by surviving cartoonist Catherine Meurisse known as “Riss” and the assassinated Stephane Charbonniere

BBC News reported that 3.7 million people came out of their homes to attend a unity rally in defiance of the filthy heresy of Islam and the misguided animals who slaughter innocents in its name.

I was sleeping in Sunday morning when a friend called saying she had a renewed sense of hope.  “What?” I asked.  “Are you not watching the Unity Rally in Paris?” she asked. “It’s wonderful.  There are millions of people lining the streets of Paris right now.  You’ve got to see this.”

I turned on the TV to see more than 40 world leaders linking arms in an act of solidarity with the families of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher deli attacks and the people of France to denounce the terrorist attacks.  The sea of humanity flowed through the streets of the City of Lights chanting “Liberte” and “Charlie” waving the flag of France and singing their national anthem.  French President Francois Hollande said, “Paris is the capital of the world today.” It was one of the most moving and powerful events we've seen in the public arena in a long time.

One thing I noticed was the conspicuous absence of one world leader—The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.

“America snubs historic Paris rally: Holder was there but skipped out early, Kerry was in India, Obama and Biden just stayed home”

That’s the headline from the UK’s Daily Mail. 

“President Barack Obama and other top members of his administration have snubbed a historic rally in Paris today.”

No cabinet secretaries or other senior officials attended, leaving only US Ambassador to France Jane Hartley as the top U.S. official there.

The article continued, “According to an administration official, President Obama spent part of his Sunday afternoon watching a National Football League game on television.  Both games were broadcast hours after the march.”

Frequent water carrier for the Administration, Rick Ungar wrote, “While I have often taken issue with the enemies of Obama who unreasonably and, in my judgment, unfairly criticize and condemn his every move, the President’s decision to pass on the Paris Unity March puts significant tarnish on his Nobel Peace Prize, the awarding of which is now increasingly looking as satirical as the work done by the fallen cartoonists and writers at Charley (sic) Hebdo.”

“So difficult is it to understand what led to the President’s decision not to participate in Paris, the only rational cause I can conjure up would be a concern for Obama’s safety.”

Bless his heart.  No, security for the president was not an issue.  About 2,000 police officers and 1,350 soldiers—including elite marksmen on rooftops—were deployed in the capital to protect participants.  If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt safe enough to attend the rally, it was certainly safe enough for The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.

The United States will always be remembered as the country whose leader thought a football game was more important than standing with the world in defiance of terrorism on that historic day.  No excuse the White House can conjure up in the coming days will erase the devastating snub.

I figured President Obama must have been awfully busy not to go to Paris today. So I checked out his schedule at http://t.co/XHSrUv1EXA.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 11, 2015

#ReasonsObamaMissedFranceRally He sent a hashtag in his place.
— Mathieas (@Mathieas) January 11, 2015

@greggutfeld Why go to Paris? All this uproar over simple workplace violence?!
— Dion Prisby (@ThatPrisby) January 11, 2015

John Kerry, Hamas, Qatar, Iran And Treachery

I spent most of a rainy Sunday morning watching the talking heads on the Sunday political talk shows and sat in amazement at the veiled anti-Semitism on parade.  I was especially appalled at the heavy-handed manner in which CNN’s Candy Crowley kept nudging the conversation in the direction of blaming Israel for the bitter war between the Israelis and the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas.  A bitter war, I might add, that Israel sought earnestly to avoid.

Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee appeared on Meet The Press and Face The Nation.  It was the Face The Nation interview that yielded the most telling evidence of just how complicit the mainstream media has been by choosing, yes choosing, to portray Israel as some horrible aggressor.

The point at which this became evident was when the host, Bob Schieffer asked, as though inexplicably shocked, “But I thought the Qataris were our allies here?”

Here’s the transcript:

"That's what's so frustrating with the administration," he said "All of this works together. You can't just pick and choose one particular region; it has to work in concert. So when you free up $2.8 billion for Iran, when they're already cash strapped because of sanctions, that means they can continue to do bad activities in the Gaza Strip, including we believe at least missile components."

He said that Qatar, which acts as a U.S. ally on other issues, are also funneling money to Hamas, as are some sources inside of Saudi Arabia. And, Rogers added, the militant group also takes legitimate foreign aid dollars coming into the region to put toward building tunnels into Israel that the Israeli government is working to destroy.

"Think about how obscene that is, the hundreds of millions of dollars they've had over a decade. Twenty percent of the people in Gaza Strip aren't connected to a water source. Ninety percent of all the water there doesn't meet international standards. But they've got, I think the Israelis disclosed, 35 tunnels. So they're diverting legitimate money. And you have Iran that is aligned into this particular interest in a way that's very, very dangerous," he said.

In an earlier interview on "Face the Nation," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army had discovered a "vast underground terror kingdom" meant to give Hamas a way to carry out attacks in Israel. He promised Israel would not stop trying to destroy the tunnels, although he did not specify whether there would be an expansion of the current ground invasion.

But Rogers warned that the combination of Iranian and Qatari support for Hamas and for certain factions in Syria is "intertwined in a way that makes it a very dangerous stew indeed."

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Chairman, let's just go back to Israel for a minute. Hamas continues to fire these rockets.  They have poured all this concrete, as you heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk about.  Where are they getting this stuff? 

SCHIEFFER: But I thought the Qataris were our allies here? 

ROGERS: Well, this is what makes this region so interesting. 

So, you have Iran and the Qataris are supporting Hamas, and certainly factions thereof. They're also supporting places in Syria. So, that is why this is so intertwined in a way that makes it a very dangerous stew, indeed. 

It is one common thing that the Shias and the Sunnis do not like, and that is a Jewish Israel state. That is confirmed. And I think they have found an outlet to try to do this. And it's spreading to other areas, Bob. This is what is the other problem. There is the unseen war in this particular event, and that is the new cyber front. 

There are not only what you see coming from Hamas, attacks on Israel, but now we have nation states engaged in the region in cyber-conflict that could cause this to escalate in a way that is very, very dangerous for stability. 

SCHIEFFER: How much do you think they have? How much money do you think has been poured into these tunnels? It's literally millions of dollars which, as I understand it, came in there to build schools and things of that nature. 

ROGERS: Well, again, I think they diverted some of the legitimate money. Clearly, that happened. Instead of building wells or water infrastructure, they diverted that money to build these tunnels. 

And I think that they are getting money again from Iran, who has been a maligned force in that whole entire region. Think about it. They are putting Hezbollah in the fight in Syria and supplying Hamas in the Gaza Strip with weapons. That is the difficult part here. 

And what is concerning about that is just about 10 days ago or so, the United States agreed to allow Iran to have another $2.8 billion released just for them to continue nuclear negotiations. And that is what is so frustrating with the administration now. 

All of this works together. You can't just pick and choose one particular region. It has to work in concert. When you free up $2.8 billion for Iran, when they are already cash-strapped because of sanctions that means they can continue to do bad activities in the Gaza Strip, including missile—we believe, at least missile components. What they have—we understand, according to public reports, they have even offered to help hide those missile systems, and their work in Syria with supporting the Assad regime. 

It's not working in concert that is helping us cause this confusion around the Middle East. 

SCHIEFFER: Well, Congressman, I want to tell you, you have explained and made this thing even more dire than I understood it at the beginning of this broadcast.

More dire.

Avi Issacharoff reported the content of John Kerry’s ceasefire proposal writing, “Israel and the US are meant to be allies; the US is meant to be committed to the protection of Israel in this most ruthless of neighborhoods; together, the US and Israel are meant to be trying to marginalize the murderous Islamic extremism that threatens the free world. Yet here was the top US diplomat appearing to accommodate a vicious terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction, with a formula that would leave Hamas better equipped to achieve that goal.”

[SNIP]

Whether through ineptitude, malice, or both, Kerry’s intervention was not a case of America’s top diplomat coming to our region to help ensure, through astute negotiation, the protection of a key ally. This was a betrayal.

Read his entire piece here.

Apparently John Kerry thinks the Israeli media is state-controlled, like it is in Washington http://t.co/273hruD82w
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 28, 2014

Calling Up The Devil

Rockets being fired from the Gaza strip into Israel 

Israeli police remove part of a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip towards the city of Tel Aviv 

A Palestinian child shouts at al-Shifa hospital after Israeli forces shelled her house 

I must commend Richard Fernandez for his elucidation of the conflict between Israel and the militant Islamist Hamas terror group and Palestinian militants.

He brings into crystal clarity evidence that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda affiliated jihadist militias and Fatah have zero interest in a peaceful coexistence with Israel.  They are committed to the extermination of Israel and its Jews.

There are estimates that Hamas’ military is still only using less than 20% of its military weapons capacity, according to an expert in Hamas affairs.  This suggests that there may be more months of rocket firepower.  Those closely watching events on the ground contend that the number of rockets being launched from Gaza into Israel is neither increasing nor decreasing.

After 12 days of fighting, Israel’s military said that Palestinian terrorists have fired at least 1,705 rockets out of an estimated stockpile of 10,000.

Their arsenal includes Qassam rockets with a range of 17km (10miles) that can reach into Ashkelon and Sderot, Grad rockets with a range of 20km (12 miles) that can hit Beersheba and Grad WS-Es 40km (24 miles) than can attack Tel Aviv, Dimona and Jerusalem.  The destructive power of their long-range Farj-5/M-75 missiles 75km (46 miles) can reach Haifa, Zikron Yaacov and Hadera and their Khaibar-1 missiles 160km (99 miles) are capable of reaching into the neighboring country of Jordan.

Mr. Fernandez explains:

“Nihilism isn’t the absence of a belief. It is something subtly different: it is the belief in nothing. The most powerful weapon of terrorism is therefore the unyielding No. “No, I will not give up. No, I will not tell the truth. No, I will not play fair. No, I will not spare children. No, I will not stop even if you surrender to me; I will not cease even if you give me everything you have, up to and including your children’s lives. Nothing short of destroying me absolutely can make me stop. And therefore I will defeat you even if you kill me. Because I will make you pay the price in guilt for annihilating me.” 

“It’s an extremely powerful weapon.  The Absolute No is a devastating attack on the self-image and esteem of civilization.  Hamas will demonstrate the No, the Nothing. It will show that deep down inside Israelis—and Americans—are animals like them.  This can be called the Seven Gambit, from a 1995 film which explores this exact theme. It depicts two detectives versus the devil in the shape of nameless man, who kills people not by attacking them directly, but by creating situations where they kill themselves by yielding to one of the seven deadly sins: sloth, gluttony, vanity—and finally vengeance and wrath.”

Sara Roy, in a warped diatribe at The Boston Globe, penned the following:

“Gaza’s present anguish did not emerge in a vacuum nor in response to a single terrible event as the Israeli government would have us believe. Instead, it emanates from a context of ongoing occupation and repression that has transformed Gaza—the center of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israeli occupation—into one of the most impoverished, imprisoned areas of the world.”

Spittle-laced voices here and abroad share Ms. Roy’s perverted view.  One such example was CNN’s Diane Magnay who called a group of Israelis “scum” and today in London and Paris tens of thousands of protesters holding placards and banners chanted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogans.

"Saturday’s demonstration in London came on the heels of numerous protests Thursday and Friday worldwide, including Cairo, Istanbul, Cape Town, Berlin, New York and Washington. Many of the protests have turned violent."

"In Istanbul, police warded off hundreds of rioters who attempted on Thursday to storm the Israeli embassy building. Demonstrators in Ankara and Istanbul also hurled stones at several compounds where Israeli officials reside. Calls for the destruction of the Jewish state were heard in both Turkish cities. Police responded by firing tear gas canisters and water cannons at the crowds. Israel decided Friday to pull some of its diplomatic staff out of Turkey in the wake of the protests."

Less than ten years ago, Israel uprooted 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip withdrawing its entire military and thereby relinquishing it to the Palestinians.  The Israelis gave the Palestinians 3,000 greenhouses worth $14 million that had produced fruits and flowers for export in an effort to promote the economy in Gaza. Palestinians looted them walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

It has been 47 years since the 1967 Six Day War and throughout Israel’s existence efforts to bring peace to the region have largely failed.  In 1967, UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for the exchange of land for peace.  Jimmy Carter brought together Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David for the Camp David Accords in 1978 that resulted in two agreements.  Then followed the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Agreement two years later that tried to build on UN Resolution 242 and 338.

The purpose of the 2000 Camp David peace talks was to offer the Gaza Strip and part of the Negev desert to the Palestinians and the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees.

The 2001 Taba talks were held amid an election campaign for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.  Barak said that "nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon". He said that he could not commit a subsequent government to what he called the "ideas" coming out of the talks. With the election of Ariel Sharon in February 2001, time ran out.

In 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative introduced a two-state solution.  Efforts to have the parties agree have failed at every turn.  The Roadmap talks in 2003 attempted to hammer out how a settlement could be reached.  This eventually led to the 2003 Geneva Accord in which the Palestinians would give up their “right of return” in exchange for almost the whole of the West Bank.

Hamas, in 2007, had just won parliamentary elections and taken control of the Gaza Strip.  The Annapolis Peace Talks that year failed because Hamas was not represented and declared it would not be bound by anything declared at the talks.

In Washington in 2010, Mahmoud Abbas wanted a guarantee of a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines.

It is impossible to understand the uncontrollable hatred of Jews.  So demented is Hamas’ insanity that they wantonly use women and children as human shields. (Please go to this link and this link to view Hamas’ confessions about the use of human shields.)

Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It must be understood that our enemy hides in mosques, puts weapons stores under hospitals and situates command posts next to kindergartens. The enemy uses the residents of Gaza as a human shield and inflicts disaster on them. The responsibility for harm to the citizens of Gaza lies on the shoulders of Hamas and Israel regrets any harm to them. The difference between Israel and Hamas is that we use missiles to defend the citizens of Israel while they use the civilian population to defend the stores of their missiles.”

Charles Krauthammer, the American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, shares his thoughts on the moral depravity of the terrorist group known as Hamas:

"To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel, fuelled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense." 

"In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera—both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the UN ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields." 

"It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear."

Romney: America Carries A Torch And Must Hold It High Enough That All The World Can See Its Light

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney gave his much anticipated foreign policy speech today at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA.  He began by citing its contributions to the nation both in war and in peace by the students’ “transformation into citizens and warriors and leaders.”

Romney continued,  “Of all the VMI graduates, none is more distinguished than George Marshall—the Chief of Staff of the Army who became Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, who helped to vanquish fascism and then planned Europe’s rescue from despair. His commitment to peace was born of his direct knowledge of the awful costs and consequences of war. General Marshall once said, ‘The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.’  Those words were true in his time—and they still echo in ours.”

Romney then began in earnest to demolish the president’s foreign policy by raising the issue of Benghazi. “As the dust settles, as the murdered are buried, Americans are asking how this happened, how the threats we face have grown so much worse, and what this calls on America to do.  These are the right questions.  And I have come here today to offer a larger perspective on these tragic recent events—and to share with you, and all Americans, my vision for a freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful world.”

“The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts.  They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East—a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century.  And the fault lines of this struggle can be seen clearly in Benghazi itself.”

“The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long.  No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.”

Lara Logan, CBS correspondent told 60 Minutes in a passionate plea, “that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war.  We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past:  ‘You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight.  In your arrogance, you think you write the script.  Our enemies are writing the story and there’s no happy ending for us.’”

Romney emphatically said it is the “responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history—not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events.  Unfortunately, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama.”

The world is in the throes of a crisis and this president has grabbed at baubles and glitter, made endless speeches, attended fundraisers and played at least 100 rounds of golf.

Romney said he would support Israel, the nation most obviously at risk if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, and charged that Obama’s poor relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has helped embolden Iran and other adversaries.

“I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security,” Romney said. “The world must never see any daylight between our two nations.”

He closed his speech with optimism, “The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.”

“The torch America carries is one of decency and hope. It is not America’s torch alone. But it is America’s duty—and honor—to hold it high enough that all the world can see its light.”

Bing West echoes my sentiment about Romney’s speech today:  “In summary, Mr. Romney has presented a foreign-policy view akin to that of President Reagan, asserting faith in American leadership—while equating Mr. Obama’s leadership to that of the timid President Jimmy Carter.”

Obama and Israel: The Undermining of a Historic Relationship

Assisted by a biased media, Barack Obama has turned his back on more than six decades of American-Israeli friendship.

This video, produced by Accuracy in Media, documents President Obama's often hostile, one-sided pressure on Israel. It also shows how the President will do anything to ensure his own chances for re-election, even if it means allowing Iran to continue developing nuclear weapons while it plays a cynical game of stalling and deception.