"I'll Listen, not Dictate." We'll See.

Ultimately, we cannot tell either the Israelis or the Palestinians what's best for them. They're going to have to make some decisions. But I do believe that the moment is ripe for both sides to realize that the path that they are on is one that is not going to result in prosperity and security for their people. And that instead, it's time to return to the negotiating table.
President Barack Hussein Obama, January26, 2009

President Obama's words, quoted above from his interview Monday with the Al Arabiya TV news channel, are just opaque enough to give comfort to supporters of each side in the Israel-Palestinian "conflict." Israel might take heart that the U.S. under Obama will not attempt to impose on them an unpalatable peace plan. Palestinians may see in those words a balance and even-handedness suggesting that, finally, America will shift its bias away from Israel and be the "honest broker" for peace they have wished for. At a glance, this statement and others throughout the interview seem elegantly designed to give succor to both camps.

But the context of these statements in Obama's first full-dress press interview since the election should give pause to those who are generally sympathetic to Israel and to Western democracy in general.

The first cause for concern is the outlet chosen by Obama and his team to make his first pronouncements on Middle East policy as president . While Al Arabiya is headquartered in Dubai, UAE, it is partly owned by a Saudi government-controlled entity, MBC. It was developed as a counter-weight to Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network with a decidedly pro-Jihadist point of view. By the low standards of the region, Al Arabiya is moderate in tone and style. But as a Saudi affiliate it is hardly a beacon of liberty and democracy for the Arab world.

The second red flag is the timing of the interview itself. That Obama addressed a primarily Arab and Muslim audience is not surprising. He has even promised to give a major speech in an Arab capital early in his presidency. But that he chose this venue for his worldwide televised debut is really quite stunning. There can be only one "first-interview-as-President," and we must assume that every news outlet in the world was vying for the privilege. That Obama chose this one signals not just a new tone but a dramatic new face of American policymaking in the Middle East.

Finally, the Israel-Palestinian issue dominated the first half of the interview, suggesting that resolving that conflict will become Obama's foreign policy obsession. And in that regard Obama made some news. The President hinted that the "Roadmap" framework developed by the parties known as the "Quartet" in 2003 (Russia, the U.S., the E.U. and the U.N.) is a nullity. Rather, the President expects progress by "working in tandem with the European Union, with Russia, with all the Arab states in the region...(emphasis mine)" Tellingly, no reference was made here to the parties to the conflict, Israel and the Palestinians.

Obama took great pains to suggest that it is time for America to listen, not dictate. On the surface this is a gratuitous attempt to "repair America's image" tattered by the neo-colonialist neo-cons these past eight years. But I think it is something more sinister, a signal sent to the Arab world that a palpable if not radical change in Middle East policy is brewing.

Obama specifically referred to the "Saudi proposal," which President Bush refused to consider because of its insistence on Israel retreating to the 1949 armistice lines--what Abba Eban once called the "Auschwitz borders." The plan also insists on "return of the Palestinian refugees," a poison pill that would presumably require Israel to absorb millions of descendants of those who fled Israel during the War of Independence. While Israel herself has praised the plan,
it is clear that it did so only to test the seriousness with which the Saudis were willing to enage in negotiations. No serious Israeli leader would use the Saudi proposal as the basis for peace talks. Yet Obama has now raised the possibility that this proposal will take center stage, and that the Arab countries will have unprecedented influence in fashioning a settlement.

Obama also hints at a new paradigm for the Middle East when he says:

And so what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions
that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if
we do that, then there's a possibility at least of achieving some breakthrough.

Interesting locution. What "preconceptions" does Obama refer to? Is it the notion that Palestinians must become a self-governing, peaceful, economically viable entity that recognizes the right of Israel to live in peace and security? Is it the insistence by Israel on its need for defensible borders? Or the belief that Israel cannot survive if it is required to absorb millions of so-called refugees?

We know that the global media and international Left have criticized President Bush's fondness for Israel and lamented his unwillingness to pressure Israel into taking "risks for peace." We know also that when Israel wages a defensive war to protect its citizens, the same crowd accuses it of war crimes. So when Obama, a man of the Left, promotes a strict departure from the Middle East policies of the past, logic compels us to conclude that he will distance himself and his administration from Israel.

So if Obama wants to listen, fine. The question is, who is he listening to?

Obama's First Week: GOP Misses Opportunity

Monday night the Senate voted to confirm Timothy Geithner as President Obama’s Treasury Secretary. While not unexpected, one hoped that the road for Geithner would have been a little bumpier. After all, mistakenly or not, Geithner failed to exercise a fundamental duty of citizenship under the voluntary system of paying income taxes that he will oversee and enforce. Lest it be forgotten, Geithner failed to fully pay his self-employment taxes for the years 2001 through 2004, as his employment status with the IMF required him to do. Geithner paid back taxes, penalties and interest for 2003 and 2004 after an IRS audit in 2006 revealed the, ahem, oversight. As Geithner himself said at his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee: "They were avoidable mistakes, but they were unintentional. I should have been more careful. I take full responsibility."

One might be tempted to forgive this "mistake" on Geithner's part. After all, his education and career as an international economics and banking expert in both the private and public sectors likely left him little time and energy to investigate the nuances of basic individual tax preparation. However it turns out that even when he discovered in 2006 that his status with the IMF required him to file as a self-employed individual, he failed to amend his returns for 2001 and 2002 accordingly. That was done, and back taxes and interest finally paid to the tune of almost $45,000, only after this additional lapse was uncovered during the vetting process for his nomination for the Treasury post.

Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee could have made a pretense of subjecting Obama’s nominee to the standards set by Obama himself in the campaign—probity, integrity, ethical purity, competence. Instead they shilled for the man by lobbing questions about the tax lapses as a set up for the apology he pretended to mean. It was pure theatre. A few Democrats did oppose Geithner--on the grounds that he would not be tough enough on capitalism.

For Senate Republicans, Geithner’s confirmation process was a second opportunity to show a pulse when it comes to challenging Obama’s cabinet choices on legitimate character grounds. The first was squandered when the GOP, save Senators Vitter and DeMint, failed to mount a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State based on her husband’s (and ergo her) conflicts of interest vis-a-vis foreign donors to the Clinton foundations and library. This time around, Republicans on the Senate Finance committee split, with 5 voting to send Geithner's nomination to the floor. There, a sufficient number of GOP Senators sided with Democrats to confirm him.

The third Obama nominee worth scrutiny is Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. The Judiciary Committee vote was delayed a week based on concerns that some Republican committee members had about Holder's role in the clemencies granted to FALN (Puerto Rican nationalist) terrorists and the Mark Rich pardon that dominated Bill Clinton’s last day in office (and came to characterize his entire term, ethically speaking). Now it appears that Holder's nomination will be sent today to the full Senate for a confirmation vote with nary a peep from Republican committee members.

What makes the GOP's performance in the Geithner matter so maddening is that in Geithner they had the perfect opportunity to make not just a political statement but to call the President on his own high standards for service in his administration. First, he isn’t a Clinton, and thus could not portray serious Republican scrutiny as a reprise of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” of the 1990s. Second, he isn’t black, and therefore his nomination doesn’t get caught up in the racial politics that frankly benefits Holder, who will become the first black Attorney General.

Third, and most significantly, Geithner's lapses go straight to the heart of the job he has now secured and resonate with millions of Americans. What could be more consequential than the failure of the man who will oversee the Internal Revenue Service, with its near mythic power to make the lives of ordinary Americans miserable, to exercise the minimum standards expected of those over whom he will have immense power.

Forget the obvious fact that any one of these three nominees would have been scuttled had they been appointed by a Republican (and this is so even if the Senate were controlled by Republicans). The double standard as applied to Democrats versus Republicans is an old, tired story. But according to the new way of conducting public business enunciated by the new President himself, indeed upon which he centered his campaign, none of these nominees measure up.

No one expected Congressional Democrats to heed Obama’s clarion call for change. Frankly, not many on my side of the political divide expected Obama himself to live up to his own rhetoric. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask of the loyal opposition, with literally nothing to lose, that they hold the majority party and its president to account in accordance with markers it set for itself.

But perhaps we expect too much from a party getting a little too comfortable in the minority.

Blacks in, Apes and Pigs Out

According to a story on the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph blog, CNN talk show host Larry King gushed that his youngest child, having caught the Obama fever, now wants to be black. Said King during an interview this week with Watergate sleuth Bob Woodward, "My younger son Cannon, he is eight. And he now says that he would like to be black. I'm not kidding. He said there's a lot of advantages. Black is in."

Based on the popularity of hip hop, the NBA and droopy jeans, I'd say that black has been "in" for quite some time. And while the dominant image of the black male as hyped by the media and the advertising, sports and music industries is often less than flattering, the popularity of Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, to say nothing of Oprah, suggests that indeed blacks have plenty of attractive and positive social models. The ascendancy of Barack Obama to the pinnacle of power is but the apotheosis of a process that has been ongoing ever since Bill Cosby became the first black television hero in "I Spy" in the 1960s. This is an entirely welcome development, and can only be a force for the continued progress of blacks in particular and of society in general.

Sadly, the fortunes of another minority in America and indeed the world may be headed in the opposite direction, at least according to Claudia Rosett, who used to cover the U.N. for the Wall Street Journal and continues to do so now as an independent journalist. (How anyone can cover that byzantine and corrupt institution and remain sane is beyond me, but apparently Ms. Rosett has managed to do so). The endangered minority is of course the Jews, and Ms. Rosett chillingly describes the rise of the "New Anti-Semitism" in a Forbes article of the same name.

The U.N., which was created on the heels of the Holocaust and which was chartered in part to avert the horrors of another such catastrophe, has become the central address for anti-semitic slurs, threats and encomiums. Its Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon makes his predecessor Kofi Annan seem like a Zionist. Ban is on record condemning Israel for attempting to stop once and for all the terrorist attacks on it citizens, and seeks to investigate Israel's actions under U.N. auspices. As evidence of the deep-rooted antipathy against it, Israel has forever been denied a seat on the U.N. Security Council, unlike rogue states like Syria and Libya.

And Iran, which has called for the violent destruction of a U.N. member state--Israel--has been treated with kid gloves while the object of its threats remains the most vilified nation in history.

Rosett chronicles recent attacks against Jews or Jewish properties in France, Britain, Denmark and Sweden, threats hurled in Amsterdam and Miami and vandalism against Jewish institutions in Chicago and Knoxville. When Jews showed up at a demonstration in Britain at which Hamas supporters were dressed as blood-drinking hook-nosed Jews, police told them (the Jews) to put away their Israeli flags so as not to inflame the situation.

The State Department and other authorities have published reports showing worldwide anti-semitic insidents to have surged in the last decade. And what has Israel done to so outrage the world during that time? It withdrew from Lebanon, signed on to the notion of a Palestinan state, and unilaterally evacuated Gaza. And still official media in the Arab world refer to Jews as "apes and pigs."

While Americans, especially American Jews, might dismiss Rosett's concerns as "overwrought," especially given the degree of comfort and relative affluence and power which American Jews enjoy, Rosett reminds us that for 2007 68% of the 1477 religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S. were anti-Jewish. Rosett sees trouble on the horizon:

There are proliferating signs that in too many places, and too many ways,
the world is tacitly coming to accept not only persecution of the Jews, but the
possibility of a second genocide--not necessarily by way of active complicity,
but under labels familiar from the last century: It was not our fault. There was
nothing we could do.

So while America rightly celebrates the racial barrier that was crossed this week, Rosett wonders whether President Obama will champion the cause of another minority that at the moment finds itself with few advocates. The Jews.

Read the entire article here.

The Obama Presidency: Game On

My political junkfood fast is officially over! Lets eat...starting with some random thoughts on the Obama Inauguration:

1. The Speech. Contrary to the lukewarm reviews of even some liberal pundits, I rather liked it. Or at least didn't hate it. Perhaps I was caught up in the atmospherics of "The Moment," or maybe I never expected as much from the speech as did the experts. I especially liked Obama's challenge to our enemies with this:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we
waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by
inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our
spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we
will defeat you.

Had a Republican uttered these words, the Left would be pulling their eyebrows out. Still, it was reassuring to hear Obama say them. Unless facts indicate otherwise I will take him at his word.

For now I will ignore the fact that Obama also promised to "roll back the specter of a warming planet." Nature seems to be doing a pretty good job of it without his help. I will also for the moment overlook Obama's stinginess when it came to praise for his predecessor. Surely GWB must have done something worth noting during the last eight years.

For commentator Yuval Levin's perspective on the Speech, click here.

2. The Benediction. God love Dr. Joseph Lowery, old bull of the civil rights movement and a contemporary of Dr. King. If Obama had to reach back into the fog of civil rights history for a closer, he could have done worse (Rev. Jesse Jackson comes to mind). Still, Lowery struck a discordant note when he dragged out the ancient rhyme about brown sticking around, yellow getting mellow, etc. By admonishing "white to embrace right," he didn't insult white folks so much as leave them scratching their heads. Didn't all-white Iowa caucus voters ignite the Obama blaze by rejecting Hillary Clinton and choosing him? Didn't white Americans throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Far West provide the margin of victory that gave Dr. Lowery the chance to laud Obama at his inauguration?


Pres. Obama proclaimed an end to petty grievances and recriminations that he says have strangled our politics. One hopes that Dr. Lowery's colorful poem represents the final airing of the grievances and recriminations of a painful but thankfully bygone era.

3. The Boos and Na-na-na-na-na-nas. As he was ushered out of office, President Bush was booed and taunted by some in the Hope-and-Change crowd that came to usher in a new kind of politics. Not nice. Enough said.

4. The Invocation. I have saved the best for last. I have only read a transcript of Rick Warren's remarks, but who can fail to be impressed when the first passage of Scripture quoted is from the Sh'ma, one of the holiest prayer in Judaism: "Hear O Israel the Lord is our god the Lord is One."

The rest of his invocation was standard fare for this sort of thing, but one other line sticks out:


Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans. United not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.


Whatever you may think of Pastor Rick, his words here capture the essence of what the other day was all about.

Plus, how can you not like a guy who pisses off so many liberals?

Atlanta Girl to represent U.S. at Maccabia Games in Israel

From my friend Atsmon Paz:

As many of you already heard, Dani has been accepted as member of a
900 USA athlete delegation to the 18th Maccabia Games in Israel. She will
be playing on the Juniors Girls Soccer Team.
Dani has asked me
to forward the blog she has prepared about her Maccabi Quest to some
of our friends. www.pazdani.blogspot.com
Please
check it out, there is a great video of her doing some cool
moves...
Any support will be greatly appreciated

Day One

Welcome to my blog. Its debut coincides with the inauguration of Barack H. Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America. I didn't vote for the new president, but I recognize and respect the importance and significance of this day. For today, a little over 40 years after the asassination of Martin Luther King, a man of mixed race (who most assuredly would have been considered black enough to be made to sit in the back of the bus in MLK's day) took the oath of the highest office in the land and became Leader of the Free World.

While I fully expect to passionately disagree with many of President Obama's policies and politics, as well as those of the majority party which he heads, today is not a day for politics. It is a day to drink in the awesome sights and sounds of the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another, one man to another, and one generation to another, in this the greatest country on earth. And while it is hard to imagine what it has been like to be black in America, it is not hard to feel joy at the joy that anyone of color must feel today.

An auspicious enough occasion to launch this new blog. Enjoy.