Watchman Newsletter

Obama’s abandonment of America

Caroline Glick (Link) - Caroline Glick (May 20, 2011)

I was out sick yesterday so I was unable to write today’s column for the Jerusalem Post. I did manage to watch President Obama’s speech on the Middle East yesterday evening. And I didn’t want to wait until next week to discuss it. After all, who knows what he’ll do by Tuesday?

Before we get into what the speech means for Israel, it is important to consider what it means for America.

Quite simply, Obama’s speech represents the effective renunciation of the US’s right to have and to pursue national interests. Consequently, his speech imperils the real interests that the US has in the region - first and foremost, the US’s interest in securing its national security.

Whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood

FrontPage Magazine (Link) - Janet Doerflinger (May 13, 2011)

How well did Middle East studies professors at American universities interpret the Egyptian uprising, particularly the risk of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power? Among fifteen prominent professors who commented publicly on the uprising before and immediately after Mubarak’s ouster, fully thirteen believed that overthrowing Mubarak would lead to democracy in Egypt and that the Muslim Brotherhood would play a constructive role. Instead of explaining the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda to the American public, they naively discounted it.

UC Irvine professor Mark LeVine predicted “real democracy” and a new, more just world order. Fawaz Gerges (Sarah Lawrence College and London School of Economics) expected “a new game of politics that focuses on democracy, on pluralism.” Ian Lustick (Penn) likened the Muslim Brotherhood to European Christian Democratic parties. Mark Tessler (Michigan) compared the Brotherhood to American social conservatives. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham (Emory) said the Brotherhood “has earned a place at the table, and no transition to a democratic process can occur without it.” And Bruce Rutherford (Colgate) wrote, “In political documents and myriad interviews over the past fifteen years, the Brotherhood’s leadership has expressed a commitment to democracy and human rights.”

Israeli rebuke of Obama exposes divide on Mideast

Reuters (Link) - Jeffrey Heller & Matt Spetalnick (May 20, 2011)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any U.S. bid to revive peace talks.

In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu insisted Israel would never pull back to its 1967 borders -- which would mean big concessions of occupied land -- that Obama had said should be the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state.

“Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality,” an unsmiling Netanyahu said as Obama listened intently beside him in the Oval Office after they met for talks.

Netanyahu insisted that Israel was willing to make compromises for peace, but made clear he had major differences with Washington over how to advance the long-stalled peace process.

Netanyahu’s resistance raises the question of how hard Obama will push for concessions he is unlikely to get, and whether the vision the U.S. leader laid out on Thursday to resolve the decades-old conflict will ever get off the ground.

Hitler, the Palestinians and the West

The Trumpet (Link) - Brad Macdonald (May 19, 2011)

When Adolf Hitler dispatched German troops to Austria and annexed the country in March 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did nothing. Despite the illegal influx of thousands of German jackboots on Austrian soil, Chamberlain believed Hitler when he promised, following the annexation, that he would no longer disturb the peace.

Six months later, Hitler’s bristling army was ready to invade the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. When Britain and France objected, Hitler promised that peace would be assured if Nazi Germany were allowed to take over the Sudetenland. Once again, despite Hitler’s policy of aggression in the Rhineland and Austria, Chamberlain fell for Hitler’s feigned peace overture. He was given the Sudetenland.

By March 1939, Nazi Germany had taken all of Czechoslovakia.

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and set off the most destructive war in history.

What is remarkable about Hitler’s strategy in the 1930s is how he pursued his genocidal ambitions by simultaneously conducting both a campaign of aggression and a campaign of feigning peace. Between 1935 and September 1939, Hitler aggressively and in some instances violently gained control of the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, inside Nazi Germany, Hitler was routinely persecuting, imprisoning and even killing Jews.

Yet, in spite of these overtly aggressive acts, Hitler was repeatedly and widely embraced as a voice of reason and a legitimate peace partner.

Obama’s Speech Sends Chills Through Netanyahu Government

Fox News (Link) - Leland Vittert (May 19, 2011)

When reached via cell phone immediately after President Obama’s speech urging a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev sounded as though he had been slapped in the face.

Netanyahu swiftly rejected Obama’s call for Israel to pull back to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. Roughly translated from Hebrew, a statement from the Prime Minister’s office said that they appreciated Obama’s commitment to peace, but called the pullback to the 1967 borders “indefensible,” and said that the Palestinians were less than an honest partner in the peace process.

While the idea of using the 1967 borders as a starting point to negotiate land swaps for a final peace deal is not new, hearing an American president use those words sent chills through the Netanyahu government, which is loathe to even think the words “’67 borders.”

Every Israeli television channel carried the speech live and commentators did not have to wait for a formal reaction to the speech to comment that Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government would feel both blindsided and abandoned by a U.S. administration that has never been viewed as a friend.

Steel On Steel Persecution Update

Steel on Steel - Donald McElvaney (May 17, 2011)

Top Stories:

1. Suspected Islamists Burn Down Two Homes in Ethiopia

2. Egyptian Convert Flees Potential Dangers in Syria

3. Hindu Extremists in India Beat Pastor Unconscious

4. Charges Fabricated against Six Christians in Bangladesh

5. Church Building in Egypt Reconstructed in Time for Easter

6. Survey of Christians in India Sets Off Alarm Bells

7. Rioting Muslims Damage Church, Properties in Pakistan

Alarming Number of Disasters Striking World “Food Baskets”

Millennium-Ark (Link) - Holly Deyo (May 16, 2011)

Dear Friends and Readers of Millennium-Ark,

For the last 5 years, we have posted countless articles covering both natural disasters and their impact on our food supplies as well as on many other timely topics. After several decades of monitoring these events, it’s hard to convey how shocked we are by the sheer number of disasters that have occurred just in the first 4 months of 2011.

Yesterday, all day, I spent analyzing natural disasters and plotted them against our food belts. Never, ever, have I seen so many federally declared disasters this early in the year.

The DHS/FEMA maps were defined by 2 colors: blue signified no disasters (to distinguish the disaster-free areas from water, they are shown in white below) and yellow indicated declared disasters. Map after map, state after state were mostly yellow. Surely this must be an error? Thinking through the numerous news items on Earth Changes, with sinking feeling, I knew they were correct. It was only when the state information was transferred to a single national map, the implications become uncomfortably clear.

Notice how many disasters have occurred in food-producing areas. They are striking the heart of our food growing regions. Many food crops have been wiped out by drought, flood, hail and freezes. These food destroyers are occurring in greater frequency and having larger impact. America’s food belts are taking mighty hits. Some growing areas will not recover this entire year.

The Full-Blown Return of Anti-Semitism in Europe

Hudson New York (Link) - Guy Millière (May 16, 2011)

On April 19, the Corfu synagogue, in Greece, was burned. How many Jews live in Corfu today? One hundred and fifty. How many Jews live in Greece? Eight thousand, or about 0.8% of the population. For some, it seems these figures are still far too high. Two other synagogues were burned in Greece during the past year. Anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls are spreading all over the country.

What happened in Greece is happening everywhere across the European continent.

During the last decade, synagogues were vandalized or set on fire in Poland, Sweden, Hungary, France. Anti-Semitic inscriptions are being drawn on building walls in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Rome. Jewish cemeteries are being ransacked. Jews are being attacked on the streets of most major cities on the continent. In the Netherlands, the police use “decoy Jews” in order to try arrest the perpetrators red-handed.

Jewish schools are being placed under police protection everywhere, and are usually equipped with security gates. Jewish children in public high schools are bullied; when parents complain, they are encouraged to choose another place of learning for their children.

Israel Invaded

FrontPage Magazine (Link) - Robert Spencer (May 16, 2011)

Israel was invaded Sunday.

This time, however, the invaders weren’t armed forces. Nonetheless, they did not come in peace, and their attempt to enter Israel was no less an act of war than the invasions of 1967 and 1973, and the rockets that jihadists regularly shoot into Israel from Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinian Arabs tried to enter the country from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Their declared intention – announced weeks ago on Facebook – was to return to the lands from which they had been expelled in 1948. The Facebook page made clear the sinister intentions of Sunday’s action: it was entitled “Third Palestinian Intifada,” and after it posted numerous calls for violence against Israel, Facebook took it down – after it had gained 350,000 members.

“The leaders of these violent demonstrations,” explained Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “their struggle is not over the 1967 borders but over the very existence of Israel, which they describe as a catastrophe that must be resolved. It is important that we look with open eyes at the reality and be aware of whom we are dealing with and what we are dealing with.”

Amid the Arab Spring, a U.S.-Saudi split

The Washington Post (Link) - Nawaf Obaid (May 15, 2011)

A tectonic shift has occurred in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Despite significant pressure from the Obama administration to remain on the sidelines, Saudi leaders sent troops into Manama in March to defend Bahrain’s monarchy and quell the unrest that has shaken that country since February. For more than 60 years, Saudi Arabia has been bound by an unwritten bargain: oil for security. Riyadh has often protested but ultimately acquiesced to what it saw as misguided U.S. policies. But American missteps in the region since Sept. 11, an ill-conceived response to the Arab protest movements and an unconscionable refusal to hold Israel accountable for its illegal settlement building have brought this arrangement to an end. As the Saudis recalibrate the partnership, Riyadh intends to pursue a much more assertive foreign policy, at times conflicting with American interests.

The backdrop for this change are the rise of Iranian meddling in the region and the counterproductive policies that the United States has pursued here since Sept. 11. The most significant blunder may have been the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in enormous loss of life and provided Iran an opening to expand its sphere of influence. For years, Iran’s leadership has aimed to foment discord while furthering its geopolitical ambitions. Tehran has long funded Hamas and Hezbollah; recently, its scope of attempted interference has broadened to include the affairs of Arab states from Yemen to Morocco. This month the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi, harshly criticized Riyadh over its intervention in Bahrain, claiming this act would spark massive domestic uprisings.

Syrian, Lebanese Protesters Storm Israeli Borders for Nakba Day

Bridges For Peace (Link) - BFP Israel Mosaic Radio - Joshua Spurlock (May 15, 2011)

Scores of Syrian protesters stormed the border in an attempt to infiltrate Israel on Sunday [May 15] during protests of the annual Nakba (catastrophe) Day, in which Arabs mourn the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian “refugee” situation. Incidents also occurred with the borders of Lebanon, the security fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]. According to an [Israel Defense Forces] IDF press release, 13 IDF soldiers were injured in the northern incidents. In one of the most serious situations, the IDF said that hundreds of Syrian rioters were involved in the incident at the northern Israeli city of Majdal Shams and “violently rioted” against IDF soldiers.

IDF spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, speaking with Bridges for Peace, said that hundreds of protesters ran to the border fence, with dozens of Syrians managing to initially infiltrate Israel. “I think it’s very serious, it’s very severe,” said Leibovich of the day’s border incidents. “These were not peace-lovers or NGOs [non-governmental organizations] or human rights supporters. These were violent people that were sent to infiltrate Israel, and it’s very severe. The fact that you cross the border of a country, of course it’s very severe.”