Obama's impotence

An open disagreement between Israel and the Pentagon in recent weeks has highlighted the dilemma President Barack Obama faces in making progress on Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday poured cold water on last week's suggestion by Israeli Prime Minister that the only way Iran can be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons is for the U.S. to threaten military action. Military action, Gates warned, would solve nothing; in fact it would be more likely to drive Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu had warned, during a visit to the U.S., that "economic sanctions are making it difficult for Iran, but there is no sign that the Ayatullah regime plans to stop its nuclear program because of them." The Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had told Vice-President Joe Biden, "The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn't cease its race for a nuclear weapon."

More at Time

El Presidente must not be seen to follow the Zionists or American Imperialists!!

This wasn't Hosni Mubarak's fault.

Egyptian President Mubarak walked the red carpet along with other leaders Obama, Netenyahu, Abbas and King Abdullah at the recent Israeli/Palestinian peace talks in Washington. Obama, as the host, led the way.

But in true traditions of  that part of the world where maintaining face and pride take precedent over everything else, the state-run Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram decided it was unseemly that their president was trailing the Zionist and American Imperialist leaders. Fortunately technology offered a solution that reality didn't, so they photoshopped the picture to put Mubarak at the front.

However, the switcheroo was observed and exposed by keen-eyed Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil and now spoofs of the picture have appeared with Mubarak walking on the moon, winning the World Cup, etc...

By trying to grovel to their leader, Al-Ahram has provided Mubarak with quite a domestic embarrassment.

See the photos and complete story here in The Guardian.

George F. Will on Israel's Netanyahu: "The anti-Obama"

From George Will's op-ed in The Washington Post:

Two photographs adorn the office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike -- in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies -- than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.

One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.

The other photograph is of Winston Churchill, who considered himself "one of the authors" of Britain's embrace of Zionism. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Beginning in 1923, Britain would govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

Netanyahu, his focus firmly on Iran, honors Churchill because he did not flinch from facts about gathering storms. Obama returned to the British Embassy in Washington the bust of Churchill that was in the Oval Office when he got there.

Read the full column here.

Christopher Hitchens: "I see no reason not to take out the Iranian regime"

Hitchens discusses the need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities and remove the regime in this video:




A fascinating article about Benjamin Netanyahu and the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran here from The Atlantic

Mideast Peace: Time to get serious about a 3 State Solution

There is little optimism at the United States' latest attempt to kick-start negotiations aimed at achieving an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement.

President Obama has threatened to downgrade relations with the Palestinian Authority unless they enter direct negotiations with Israel by mid-August.

PA President Abbas has so far refused to speak directly to the Israelis unless they commit to a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to direct talks with the Palestinians as long as there are no preconditions.

The pressure on the Palestinians from the US and the Arab League's acquiescence to direct negotiations are expected to give Abbas the latitude to reverse his position and join negotiations in September.

But what sort of peace will they be negotiating?

Abbas' Fatah in the West Bank and  Hamas-ruled Gaza do not speak with one voice. Neither recognizes the other's legitimacy. Gaza is a disastrous, terrorist-infested mess, ruled by a fanatical theocratic party whose founding charter reads as if it were written by psychopaths suffering from paranoid delusions. It includes references to talking trees wanting to kill Jews and an international conspiracy of Zionists, Freemasons and the Rotary and Lions Clubs.

Israel will not agree to a right of passage between the two Palestinian territories while one of them is controlled by a group committed to the Jewish state's destruction. Hamas' policies have completely sidelined them from participating in the expected upcoming round of negotiations.

For the past few years, the roadmap for peace has talked about a "two-state" solution, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that the only hope for an agreement would be the more recently proposed 3 State Solution.

With the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of achieving peace with Gaza, which has developed its own political culture, there will be a need for 2 Palestinian states, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza.

This idea was proposed, in a form, in early 2009 by John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations.

In Bolton's scenario, Jordan would assume control of the West Bank and Egypt would assume responsibility for Gaza. While that aspect of the solution is unfeasible, since both those Arab countries have rejected that idea and the administrative quagmire that would accompany it, the idea of Israel forming a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and shelving Gaza for the time being seems the only feasible option.

A single agreement with the West Bank will be difficult enough, given Israel's disastrously inefficient system of proportional representation that allows fringe parties to have disproportionate power in government. It will be a nightmare for Israel to have to remove the fanatically orthodox settlers from the West Bank, who have a messianic commitment to their theologically-inspired vision of  a Greater Israel. But sensible forces in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, understood there was no other way. That was part of his motivation for building the Security Barrier between Israel and the West Bank. It has served its primary purpose of virtually eliminating suicide attacks from the west bank, but it is also no great secret that the barrier is the most likely future border between Israel and the Palestinians.

While East Jerusalem would remain a point of contention, it appears that the Palestinian side has also recognized this new reality.

While the Gaza situation would remain an open wound where its intractable government, which acts as an Iranian proxy, cannot be dealt with, there is also movement in that area. There is growing support for an international solution to Gaza, which would see Israel cede authority to an international force that would provide security for Israel while assuming responsibility for that territory.

Once a democratic peaceful Palestinian state emerges on the West Bank, it would place enormous pressure on Gaza to find a means of achieving peace. It would alleviate some pressure on Israel and the US in the region, and further isolate hostile dictatorships and their operatives like Syria, Iran and Hezbollah.