By Peter Schiff
July 31, 2009
Peter Schiff is President of Euro Pacific Capital, an investment firm specializing in foreign markets. Mr. Schiff is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, CNBC, and other media outlets.
Have you heard the great news? The recession is over! It’s true; I saw it on TV. Why fret about growing unemployment lines when banks are paying big-time bonuses again?
Proof of the turn was apparently revealed by the 2nd quarter GDP figures that showed that the economy declined by only 1%. After four consecutive quarters of negative GDP, the green shoots now assume that growth will resume over the summer.
But before we pop the corks, it may be worthwhile to ask, “what really has changed, and what is responsible for our new lease on life?”In truth, because of the continued profligacy of the government and Federal Reserve, the imbalances that caused the current recession have actually worsened. We are now in an even deeper hole than when the crisis began. Rather than wrapping up a recession, we are actually sinking into a depression. If things look better now, it’s just because we are in the eye of the storm.
We must remember that recessions inevitably follow periods of artificial growth. During these booms, malinvestments are made which ultimately must be liquidated during the ensuing busts. In short, mistakes made during booms are corrected during busts – and in the recent boom we made some real whoppers. We borrowed and spent too much money, bought goods we couldn’t afford, built houses we couldn’t carry, and developed a service sector economy completely dependent on consumer credit and rising asset prices. All the while, we allowed our industrial base to crumble and our infrastructure to decay.
In order to lay the foundation for real and lasting recovery, market forces must be allowed to repair the damage. However, current policy is counterproductive to this end. Trillions in stimulus dollars have kept the party going, but now what? How does deficit spending by the government address the problems that brought about the crash? It doesn’t; it just delays and worsens the hangover – and we have to hope we don’t die of alcohol poisoning.
By interfering with the unpleasant forces of the recession, we simply trade short-term gain for long-term pain. By propping up inefficient companies that should fail, we deprive more effective companies of the capital they need to grow. By holding up over-valued asset prices, we prevent the prudent or less well-off from snatching them up and, in doing so, creating a new price equilibrium based upon reality. By maintaining artificially low interest rates, we discourage the very savings that are so critical to capital formation and future economic growth. In addition, the false economic signals the Fed sends the market prevent a more efficient re-allocation of resources from taking place and leads to even more bad economic decision being made. By running such huge deficits, we further crowd-out private enterprise by making it harder for businesses to invest or hire.
The recently passed “cash for clunkers” program (currently on-hold, as it ran out of funding in one week) is a perfect example of how government policy can make the economy worse. By incentivizing Americans to destroy fully paid-for cars so they can go deeper into debt buying brand new ones, the government weakens an already crippled economy. The last thing we want to do is subsidize Americans to go deeper into debt by buying more stuff. Don’t they realize that is precisely the behavior that got us into this mess?
Think about it this way. If your friend were in trouble because he had too much debt, would you encourage him to take on even more? Wouldn’t a real sign of progress be a reduction of debt, even if he had to cut back on his everyday expenses? What is true for an individual is also true for a collection of individuals, even if they call themselves a ‘government.’ If, as a country, we are even deeper into debt now than we were before, we are worse off. Period. The fact that the additional debt enabled better short-term GDP numbers is a long-term negative.
Since we have learned nothing from past mistakes, we are condemned to repeat them. As if we have not already suffered enough as a consequence of the Bush/Greenspan stimulus, Obama/Bernanke are giving ever larger doses, which will prove lethal to any recovery. The recession is over; long live the depression!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
On Investing
From today's remarks by the estimable Richard Russell, author (only for the last 50 years) of the Dow Theory Letter:
Two of the greatest attributes an investor can possess are --
(1) Phenomenal patience. Most amateurs are impatient and they demand action. The desire for action has probably cost more people more money than anything else I know of...
(2) A knowledge of history, and an appreciation of risk. The great fortunes in the stock market have been made in the BUYING. There is no substitute for buying great values. Great values usually present themselves at true bear market bottoms at a time when nobody will touch them.
Have we seen a bear market bottom in this cycle? Says Russell:
[C]lassic bear market bottoms [are]when sentiment regarding the market is black-bearish and when blue-chip stocks are selling at incredible bargain prices (i.e. dividend yields are above 6% and P/E ratios are below 6. And yes, that does happen). The last time we saw such great values was at the 1974 lows and again during the lows of 1980 and 1982.
What does the 85-year old veteran market watcher think lies ahead?
The difficulty in coming years is going to be in making money; it's going to be even more difficult in coming years to avoid losing money. In other words, the hard part will be to hang on to your money and assets over the next decade. There will be many so-called opportunities to make money, but most of them will prove to be false or very risky.
I have no idea if Russell is right. But if if you believe age and experience trumps youth and skill, you might want to give him his due.
Two of the greatest attributes an investor can possess are --
(1) Phenomenal patience. Most amateurs are impatient and they demand action. The desire for action has probably cost more people more money than anything else I know of...
(2) A knowledge of history, and an appreciation of risk. The great fortunes in the stock market have been made in the BUYING. There is no substitute for buying great values. Great values usually present themselves at true bear market bottoms at a time when nobody will touch them.
Have we seen a bear market bottom in this cycle? Says Russell:
[C]lassic bear market bottoms [are]when sentiment regarding the market is black-bearish and when blue-chip stocks are selling at incredible bargain prices (i.e. dividend yields are above 6% and P/E ratios are below 6. And yes, that does happen). The last time we saw such great values was at the 1974 lows and again during the lows of 1980 and 1982.
What does the 85-year old veteran market watcher think lies ahead?
The difficulty in coming years is going to be in making money; it's going to be even more difficult in coming years to avoid losing money. In other words, the hard part will be to hang on to your money and assets over the next decade. There will be many so-called opportunities to make money, but most of them will prove to be false or very risky.
I have no idea if Russell is right. But if if you believe age and experience trumps youth and skill, you might want to give him his due.
Why Won’t Obama Talk to Israel?
By Aluf Benn
I saw Aluf Benn speak in Israel in 2003. He is a senior editor at Haaretz, Israel's left-leaning daily newspaper. He is smart and perceptive and both reflects and shapes elite (leftish) opinion in Israel. Aluf Benn is no fan of the Netanyahu government or the Israeli right. Here is his op-ed piece which appeared July 28th in the New York Times (HT: Chuck Berk)
IN his global tours and TV appearances, President Obama has spoken to Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Africans. His words have stirred emotions and been well received everywhere.
But he hasn’t bothered to speak directly to Israelis.
And the effect? Six months into his presidency, Israelis find themselves increasingly suspicious of Mr. Obama. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that’s been interpreted here as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel’s expense — or simply to express the president’s dislike for Mr. Netanyahu.
This would seem counterproductive, given the importance the president has placed on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Israel is part of the problem, it’s also part of the solution. Yet so far, neither the president nor any senior administration official has given a speech or an interview aimed at an Israeli audience, beyond brief statements made at diplomatic photo ops.
The Arabs got the Cairo speech; we got silence.
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of
one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
As a result, Mr. Netanyahu enjoys a virtual domestic consensus over his rejection of the settlement freeze. Moreover, he has succeeded in portraying Mr. Obama as a shaky ally. In Mr. Netanyahu’s narrative, the president has fallen under the influence of top aides — in this case Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — whom the prime minister has called "self-hating Jews."
Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu is the defender of national glory in face of unfair pressure, someone who sticks to the first commandment of Israeli culture: thou shalt never be the freier (that is, the dupe).
So far, Israelis have embraced Mr. Netanyahu’s message. A Jerusalem Post poll of Israeli Jews last month indicated that only 6 percent of those surveyed considered the Obama administration to be pro-Israel, while 50 percent said that its policies are more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli.
Less scientifically: Israeli rightists have — in columns, articles and public statements — taken to calling the president by his middle name, Hussein, as proof of his pro-Arab tendencies.
What went wrong? Several explanations come to mind.
First, in the 16 rosy years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Israelis became spoiled by unfettered presidential attention. Memories of State Department "Arabists" leading American policy in the Middle East were erased. The White House coordinated its policy with Jerusalem, and stayed out of the way when Israel embarked on controversial military offensives in Lebanon and Gaza. This approach infuriated America’s Arab and European allies, which blamed Washington for one-sidedness — something they were willing to forgive of Bill Clinton but not of George W. Bush.
Mr. Obama came to office determined to repair America’s broken alliances in Europe and the Middle East. One way to do this — to prove that he was the opposite of his predecessor — was to place some distance between Israel and himself.
Second, Mr. Obama’s quest for diplomacy has appeared to Israelis as dangerous American naïveté. The president offered a hand to the Iranians, and got nothing, merely giving them more time to advance their nuclear program. In Israeli eyes, he was humiliated by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. And he failed to move Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel. Conclusion: Mr. Obama is a softie, eager to please his listeners and avoid confrontation with anyone who is not Mr. Netanyahu.
Third, Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland. Mr. Obama’s speech, which linked Israel’s existence to the Jewish tragedy, infuriated many Israelis who sensed its closeness to the narrative of enemies like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
Fourth, as far as most Israelis are concerned, Mr. Obama has made a mistake in focusing on a settlement freeze. For starters, mainstream Israelis rarely have anything to do with the settlements; many have no idea where they are, even when they’re a half-hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.
More important: in the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that larger, closer-to-home settlements (the "settlement blocs") will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force — as the administration did — the existence of previous understandings between the United States and Israel over limited settlement construction?
There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama’s credibility — and strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s position. (Scott: emphasis mine)
Perhaps there are good reasons behind Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy.
Perhaps the settlement freeze is in Israel’s best interest. Perhaps the president is truly committed to Israel’s long-term security and well-being.
Perhaps his popularity in the Arab street is the missing ingredient of peacemaking.
But until the president talks to us, we won’t know.
Next time you’re in the neighborhood, Mr. President, speak to us directly. We will surely listen.
I saw Aluf Benn speak in Israel in 2003. He is a senior editor at Haaretz, Israel's left-leaning daily newspaper. He is smart and perceptive and both reflects and shapes elite (leftish) opinion in Israel. Aluf Benn is no fan of the Netanyahu government or the Israeli right. Here is his op-ed piece which appeared July 28th in the New York Times (HT: Chuck Berk)
IN his global tours and TV appearances, President Obama has spoken to Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Africans. His words have stirred emotions and been well received everywhere.
But he hasn’t bothered to speak directly to Israelis.
And the effect? Six months into his presidency, Israelis find themselves increasingly suspicious of Mr. Obama. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that’s been interpreted here as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel’s expense — or simply to express the president’s dislike for Mr. Netanyahu.
This would seem counterproductive, given the importance the president has placed on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Israel is part of the problem, it’s also part of the solution. Yet so far, neither the president nor any senior administration official has given a speech or an interview aimed at an Israeli audience, beyond brief statements made at diplomatic photo ops.
The Arabs got the Cairo speech; we got silence.
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of
one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
As a result, Mr. Netanyahu enjoys a virtual domestic consensus over his rejection of the settlement freeze. Moreover, he has succeeded in portraying Mr. Obama as a shaky ally. In Mr. Netanyahu’s narrative, the president has fallen under the influence of top aides — in this case Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — whom the prime minister has called "self-hating Jews."
Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu is the defender of national glory in face of unfair pressure, someone who sticks to the first commandment of Israeli culture: thou shalt never be the freier (that is, the dupe).
So far, Israelis have embraced Mr. Netanyahu’s message. A Jerusalem Post poll of Israeli Jews last month indicated that only 6 percent of those surveyed considered the Obama administration to be pro-Israel, while 50 percent said that its policies are more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli.
Less scientifically: Israeli rightists have — in columns, articles and public statements — taken to calling the president by his middle name, Hussein, as proof of his pro-Arab tendencies.
What went wrong? Several explanations come to mind.
First, in the 16 rosy years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Israelis became spoiled by unfettered presidential attention. Memories of State Department "Arabists" leading American policy in the Middle East were erased. The White House coordinated its policy with Jerusalem, and stayed out of the way when Israel embarked on controversial military offensives in Lebanon and Gaza. This approach infuriated America’s Arab and European allies, which blamed Washington for one-sidedness — something they were willing to forgive of Bill Clinton but not of George W. Bush.
Mr. Obama came to office determined to repair America’s broken alliances in Europe and the Middle East. One way to do this — to prove that he was the opposite of his predecessor — was to place some distance between Israel and himself.
Second, Mr. Obama’s quest for diplomacy has appeared to Israelis as dangerous American naïveté. The president offered a hand to the Iranians, and got nothing, merely giving them more time to advance their nuclear program. In Israeli eyes, he was humiliated by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. And he failed to move Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel. Conclusion: Mr. Obama is a softie, eager to please his listeners and avoid confrontation with anyone who is not Mr. Netanyahu.
Third, Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland. Mr. Obama’s speech, which linked Israel’s existence to the Jewish tragedy, infuriated many Israelis who sensed its closeness to the narrative of enemies like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
Fourth, as far as most Israelis are concerned, Mr. Obama has made a mistake in focusing on a settlement freeze. For starters, mainstream Israelis rarely have anything to do with the settlements; many have no idea where they are, even when they’re a half-hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.
More important: in the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that larger, closer-to-home settlements (the "settlement blocs") will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force — as the administration did — the existence of previous understandings between the United States and Israel over limited settlement construction?
There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama’s credibility — and strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s position. (Scott: emphasis mine)
Perhaps there are good reasons behind Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy.
Perhaps the settlement freeze is in Israel’s best interest. Perhaps the president is truly committed to Israel’s long-term security and well-being.
Perhaps his popularity in the Arab street is the missing ingredient of peacemaking.
But until the president talks to us, we won’t know.
Next time you’re in the neighborhood, Mr. President, speak to us directly. We will surely listen.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Our Trip to Israel: A Letter to my Sons (Part 3)
A Day in Tzefat. On the 17th Day of Tammuz, a fast day on the Jewish calendar which begins the mourning period known as the “three weeks,” we travelled to the holy and mystical city of Tzefat. In retrospect it is not such a good idea to travel on a tzom (fast day), especially one as hot as this one was. But travel we did, and I think the trip was worthwhile. 
We met my new friend Benyamin Rosenberg about noon at the top of the city. Mr. Rosenberg is a Breslaver chassid from Brooklyn who moved to Tzefat many years ago. I met him when I was last in Tzefat, and have become a supporter of his organization Eizer L’Shabbos. This organization (which he runs with help from his wife and son and occasional volunteers) distributes food packages to needy Jews on Shabbat and Chagim (holidays). More than four hundred such meals are delivered every Chag.
We met my new friend Benyamin Rosenberg about noon at the top of the city. Mr. Rosenberg is a Breslaver chassid from Brooklyn who moved to Tzefat many years ago. I met him when I was last in Tzefat, and have become a supporter of his organization Eizer L’Shabbos. This organization (which he runs with help from his wife and son and occasional volunteers) distributes food packages to needy Jews on Shabbat and Chagim (holidays). More than four hundred such meals are delivered every Chag.
Benyamin patiently gave us a walking tour of the old city and seemed oblivious to the blazing heat, even though he was wearing traditional Chassidic garb and refrained from drinking in deference to the fast. He showed us the famous Ari shul, the Abohav, the “Gra” and a few others, and had a story about each. He took us to a courtyard that was destroyed by missile fire in the Lebanon war, narrowly missing the occupants of the adjacent house. We passed through the artist’s colony with the many galleries and shops catering to Tzefat’ visitors. Finally we entered the large Breslav synagogue, with its brilliant chandeliers, ornate carved Aron ha Kodesh (ark), and spectacular view of the mountains of Meron in the distance and the cemetery of the Sages below. 
By the time we were finished around 5pm we were all wiped out, and yet Benyamin was ready to show us more. We ended with a visit to his son Nosson’s grocery store, which is a staging area for the meal deliveries of Eizer L’Shabbos. (Nosson also happens to be a Hatzalah volunteer in Tzefat). There we said our “goodbyes” and left for the long trip back to Jerusalem.
For me the highlight of the trip to Tzefat was not so much the city itself, which I have visited before. Rather it was being in the presence of a true “tzaddik,” a righteous person, whose life is dedicated to helping others. Mr. Rosenberg receives no personal income from his efforts, and no doubt struggles to make ends meet. Yet what joy and satisfaction he must receive by performing the incredible mitzvah of feeding the poor, hungry and widowed. He is also kind and wise, and I am happy you had the chance to meet such a fine example of a Jewish hero.
By the time we were finished around 5pm we were all wiped out, and yet Benyamin was ready to show us more. We ended with a visit to his son Nosson’s grocery store, which is a staging area for the meal deliveries of Eizer L’Shabbos. (Nosson also happens to be a Hatzalah volunteer in Tzefat). There we said our “goodbyes” and left for the long trip back to Jerusalem.
For me the highlight of the trip to Tzefat was not so much the city itself, which I have visited before. Rather it was being in the presence of a true “tzaddik,” a righteous person, whose life is dedicated to helping others. Mr. Rosenberg receives no personal income from his efforts, and no doubt struggles to make ends meet. Yet what joy and satisfaction he must receive by performing the incredible mitzvah of feeding the poor, hungry and widowed. He is also kind and wise, and I am happy you had the chance to meet such a fine example of a Jewish hero.
The Shuk, Geulah and Mea Shearim. The Mechane Yehuda market (shuk) is an open air market off Jaffa Street in central Jerusalem, selling all manner of vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, bread, cheese and sweets. On Thursdays and on Friday mornings Jewish housewives (and quite a few husbands) pull their wagons to the Shuk and load up for Shabbat. Many of the stalls have been run by the same families for generations, and the vendors are not shy about calling out to shoppers to taste their wares. There really is no place quite like the shuk. 
Friday is also shopping day in Geulah, the “ultra” religious neighborhood adjacent to Mea Shearim just north of the center of Jerusalem. Locals preparing for Shabbat crowd the stores in Geulah buying everything from soup to nuts (literally) to marzipan. Some of the best bakeries in Jerusalem can be found here. It is also a great place to purchase religious gifts and articles, like tallis, tefillin, challah borads and knives, Kiddush cups and the like.
Friday is also shopping day in Geulah, the “ultra” religious neighborhood adjacent to Mea Shearim just north of the center of Jerusalem. Locals preparing for Shabbat crowd the stores in Geulah buying everything from soup to nuts (literally) to marzipan. Some of the best bakeries in Jerusalem can be found here. It is also a great place to purchase religious gifts and articles, like tallis, tefillin, challah borads and knives, Kiddush cups and the like.
Shabbos--Friday Night. No week in Israel (or anywhere for that matter) would be complete without Shabbos. And no Shabbos in Jerusalem would be complete if we didn’t spend a portion of it with the Obersteins. On each of my many trips to Israel, including those with each of you, I have had Shabbos or Yom Tov at Bracha and Avi’s.
We took a cab to Ramat Eshkol and arrived about 7:30pm, in time to accompany Avi, Arye Leib Friedman, Avi’s brother-in-law Avi Fertig and his son to the “Pagi” shul for mincha prayers. This was followed by a short walk to the “Shmuel HaNavi” neighborhood where we entered the shul of the Chassidic Dushinsky dynasty. Sort of a mini-Belz, we got a real flavor for a chassidush Kabbalat Shabbat. Yes, we were on the receiving end of puzzled stares from some of the little Dushensky children, and I suppose we are as strange to them as they are to us.
In addition to Arye Leib, the Fertigs and us, the Obersteins’ Shabbos dinner guest list included the newlyweds Michoel and Bidi Deutsch from Atlanta. I know you enjoyed the conversation, particularly talking to Michoel Deutsch. Michoel is a young man who I think represents the best Torah Judaism has to offer, in no small part due to the love and devotion of his fine parents, Rabbi and Dena Deutsch.
It is easy to assume that a young man or woman raised in an observant Jewish household walks a straight and narrow path to a Torah-true life, but this is often not the case. All people face challenges along the “derech” (path) of becoming the person they are becoming, religious and non-religious alike. Our lives are shaped in large part by the way we choose to respond to our challenges, and they should be seen as opportunities-- not obstacles-- to personal growth and success.
We finished our lovely Shabbos meal at the Obersteins and walked back to our apartment at King George Street through the semi-deserted streets of Geulah, arriving home sometime after 1:30am. I hope that you enjoyed Shabbos with our Jerusalem ”family” as much as I did.
Monday, July 27, 2009
5 Freedoms you'd Lose in Health Care Reform
On the CNN.Money.com website: If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
Thats right. CNN blows the lid off of their dear leader's healthcare reform proposal. What has the world come to...
Thats right. CNN blows the lid off of their dear leader's healthcare reform proposal. What has the world come to...
Friday, July 24, 2009
This Could be Big, Folks
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (one of the clunkiest titles for an organization ever) represents over 50 Jewish organizations, and as such represents the mainstream of Jewish elite opinion. While this has been building for some time, the statement released today by Conference executives opposing Obama's call for a building freeze in Jerusalem is nevertheless stunning:
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has long advocated and supported the unity of Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel. As such, we believe that legal construction by residents of the city should be allowed as long as it is in keeping with the standards and requirements of the municipality and the national government. We find disturbing the objections raised to the proposed construction of residential units on property that was legally purchased and approved by the appropriate authorities. The area in question houses major Israeli governmental agencies, including the national police headquarters. The United States has in the past and recently raised objections to the removal of illegal structures built by Arabs in eastern Jerusalem even though they were built in violation of zoning and other requirements often on usurped land. In addition to the Jewish housing, the project called for apartment units for Arabs as well.
It is particularly significant that the structure in question formerly was the house of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews. He was also linked to the 1929 massacre in Hebron and other acts of incitement that resulted in deaths and destruction in what was then Palestine. There has been an expressed desire by some Palestinians to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
As a united city, Jerusalem’s Jewish and Arab residents should be permitted to reside wherever legal and security requirements allow. Hundreds of Arab families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the same right should be accorded to Jewish residents in live where they choose in Jerusalem. To do otherwise would undermine and prejudge the status of the city.
No government of Israel has or can pursue a discriminatory policy that would prevent the legitimate presence of Jews in any area of its capital.
The Zionist Organization of America has publicly criticized the Obama Administration over its Israel policy, but it is considered by many to be a rightist group with an political agenda. The Conference, on the other hand, is considered somewhat left of center, and its Chairman, Alan Solow, was an outspoken and enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign. Thus the issuance of this rebuke to the administration is seen by some as a turning point in Jewish support for Obama.
Of course it will take more than a press release by an elite Jewish organization to turn the majority of American Jews against Obama. But make no mistake--this is a shot across the bow of S.S. Obama that will have the world of politics and policy take notice.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has long advocated and supported the unity of Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel. As such, we believe that legal construction by residents of the city should be allowed as long as it is in keeping with the standards and requirements of the municipality and the national government. We find disturbing the objections raised to the proposed construction of residential units on property that was legally purchased and approved by the appropriate authorities. The area in question houses major Israeli governmental agencies, including the national police headquarters. The United States has in the past and recently raised objections to the removal of illegal structures built by Arabs in eastern Jerusalem even though they were built in violation of zoning and other requirements often on usurped land. In addition to the Jewish housing, the project called for apartment units for Arabs as well.
It is particularly significant that the structure in question formerly was the house of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews. He was also linked to the 1929 massacre in Hebron and other acts of incitement that resulted in deaths and destruction in what was then Palestine. There has been an expressed desire by some Palestinians to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
As a united city, Jerusalem’s Jewish and Arab residents should be permitted to reside wherever legal and security requirements allow. Hundreds of Arab families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the same right should be accorded to Jewish residents in live where they choose in Jerusalem. To do otherwise would undermine and prejudge the status of the city.
No government of Israel has or can pursue a discriminatory policy that would prevent the legitimate presence of Jews in any area of its capital.
The Zionist Organization of America has publicly criticized the Obama Administration over its Israel policy, but it is considered by many to be a rightist group with an political agenda. The Conference, on the other hand, is considered somewhat left of center, and its Chairman, Alan Solow, was an outspoken and enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign. Thus the issuance of this rebuke to the administration is seen by some as a turning point in Jewish support for Obama.
Of course it will take more than a press release by an elite Jewish organization to turn the majority of American Jews against Obama. But make no mistake--this is a shot across the bow of S.S. Obama that will have the world of politics and policy take notice.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Our Trip to Israel: A Letter to my Sons (Part 2)
The Scheinberg Wedding. Regretfully we left the Sheva Bracha meal before the real singing and dancing got underway, but I felt it was important to drop in on another Jerusalem wedding, that of the daughter of Rabbi Avraham Yona Scheinberg. Rabbi Scheinberg is the Rosh haYeshiva of a boys’ high school in the northern Jerusalem suburb of Neve Yaacov (Nachlat Shmuel, named after its founder, Rabbi Scheinberg's father.) I sort of “adopted” this Yeshiva several years ago after Joseph and I first met the Rabbi on a previous trip to Israel. Rabbi Scheinberg is possessed of an infectious enthusiasm and an obvious ahavas Hashem (love for Hashem), and he has taken a keen interest in our family’s journey in Torah and mitzvos.Our friend Yaacov Rosenthal, R’ Scheinberg’s nephew and “right-hand man” at the Yeshiva, hadn’t let on to the Rosh haYeshiva that we would be dropping by, so Rabbi Scheinberg was very surprised to see us walk into the huge wedding hall in Givat Shaul. He greeted us like special honored guests and introduced us around to the groom's father and other dignitaries. I know you were uncomfortable in your colorful Polo sports shirts amid the sea of black suits and white shirts, but I assure you're presence was welcome and our attendance most appreciated.
You had a front row seat to something few American Jews will ever see: hundreds of “ultra-Orthodox” young men gathered together in joy and celebration of a young couple’s marriage. You saw dozens of young men dancing and twirling to the quick, rhythmic music of the excellent band, making circles within circles around the groom, his father and father-in-law, performing “shtick” for the bride and groom, and generally making merry. Those not dancing formed an outer circle and stood clapping and cheering, while still others left the ballroom for conversation or fresh air. What you didn’t see was the joyous celebration on the other side of the mechitza, where the women -only dancing was no doubt equally as spirited as on the men’s side.
Again, one would have to have a heart of stone not to appreciate the pride and joy in being Jewish of those celebrating or even watching a simcha such as this.
Saving Lives: United Hatzalah, the Israel Rescue Organization. As you know our family has supported United Hatzalah over the years, primarily because of our good friend Eli Beer, and the organization is close to our hearts. Eli was out of the country on a fundraising trip for Hatzalah, but his colleague Daniel Katzenstein, showed us around the headquarters in central Jerusalem. Daniel is a paramedic who, like all Hatzalah volunteers, is always on call no matter where he is in the country. Daniel also is involved with administration of Hatzalah’s fund-raising operations and public relations. He writes the organization’s weekly newsletter.
Hatzalah volunteers are the first to respond to the scene of traffic accidents, terror attacks and even missile strikes throughout Israel. Daniel gave us a tour of the command center, showing us how dispatchers keep track of calls for help and match them with the appropriate volunteer. A huge monitor shows live feeds of Israel’s busiest highways and intersections. Dispatchers help volunteers get to the scene of an accident or injury within an average of 70 seconds from the receipt of a call.
Once the new million-dollar Life Compass software is up and running, dispatchers will be able to know in real time which volunteers are closest to a scene anywhere in the country.
We had the experience of riding in an “ambutractor” used for search and rescue, and to try on the orange shrapnel-proof vests and battle helmets used by volunteers near war zones. Boy, do I look awful in orange!
I was impressed with Daniel’s easy-going nature,
professionalism and dedication to the mission of saving lives. His background in business administration and public relations will surely come in handy as he helps streamline Hatzalah into an even more efficient organization. I hope the dedication and tireless efforts of people like Daniel and Eli Beer will inspire you to support organizations like Hatzalah when you can.
We had the experience of riding in an “ambutractor” used for search and rescue, and to try on the orange shrapnel-proof vests and battle helmets used by volunteers near war zones. Boy, do I look awful in orange!
I was impressed with Daniel’s easy-going nature,
professionalism and dedication to the mission of saving lives. His background in business administration and public relations will surely come in handy as he helps streamline Hatzalah into an even more efficient organization. I hope the dedication and tireless efforts of people like Daniel and Eli Beer will inspire you to support organizations like Hatzalah when you can. The Mitzvah of Visiting the Sick. The mitzvah of bikur cholim, visiting the sick, is one of the biggies, along with honoring your parents. The Talmud makes an extraordinary promise that “he who visits the sick will be spared the punishment of the next world.” So you should feel very good about our visit to see “Uncle” Gabe Beer, who is making a miraculous recovery from a very serious illness.
I first met Uncle Gabe several years ago in Atlanta. He is Moreh Dena Friedman’s uncle, and Eli Beer’s Dad. Each of you have spent Shabbos at his home in northern Jerusalem, and you know what a good and gentle man he is. He is also very learned, and can talk about almost any subject from politics to Talmud to business. He has lived the entire history of the State of Israel, first coming to the country just after the War of Independence in 1948. He also has a wonderful sense of humor, which comes in handy if your son is Eli Beer.
He and his wife “Aunt” Chaye are very pious people and are exacting in their performance of mitzvos. Chaye is like an old-fashioned bubbe who fusses over guests and never lets them leave hungry. Gabe and Chaye are both models of what a ben and bas Torah should be, and have set a high standard for their children, and their 70 (yes, seven-oh) grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There are no finer people than the Beers.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Our Trip to Israel: A Letter to my Sons (Part 1)
July 23, 2009
My Dear Sons,
Hopefully you felt the love and warmth that was directed towards the bride and groom, and would agree that it’s not a bad way to get a marriage off on the right foot.
My Dear Sons,
Now that some time has passed since our return to Atlanta from our wonderful trip to Israel, I want to share with you my impressions of our visit, and my thoughts as to what we accomplished in terms of our understanding of what it means to be a Jew in the modern world.
Let me first confess that while our itinerary seemed to develop in a more or less unhurried and unplanned fashion, in fact the main theme of the trip was thought through in advance. My unstated goal—hopefully it wasn’t too obvious—was to introduce you to individuals and experiences that would leave indelible and positive impressions of the dynamic and diverse people who lead a Torah-observant life. Hopefully you came away from the trip with an appreciation of the many and various ways in which a Jew can live a G-d-centered life of Torah without “sacrificing” his or her individual personality.
Rather than review in detail each day’s activities in journal fashion, I prefer to recount events and experiences that I think were meaningful and which I hope enhanced your appreciation of Yiddishkeit (Jewishness) and the importance of the performance of mitzvos.
The Schroeder-Fruchtman Wedding. It isn’t every day that two families from the same shul in Atlanta make a chossona (wedding) for their children living in Israel. We were fortunate enough to attend and celebrate the “wedding of the century” in a suburb of Jerusalem, in which Aaron Fruchtman and Shoshana Schroeder exchanged vows. Shoshana’s parents, Harold and Lora Schroeder, and Aaron’s Mom, Lora Fruchtman, are active and valued long-time members of Congregation Ariel as well as good friends of our family.
There is nothing that touches the heart and soul of a Jew quite like a Jewish wedding. No one who is not closed-minded or cold-hearted could fail to be moved by the the insistent heart-catching strains of the violin as the bride and groom make their way to the chuppah, the sight of the Kallah (bride) circling the Chosson (groom) seven times under the chuppah, and the sound of shattered glass signifying the completion of the vows. This particular event was held under a cool, dry Jerusalem summer sky, with a lovely breeze carrying in the sweet smell of bougainvillea.
Due to the Israeli flavor of events, the reception was casual and relaxed. I seem to recall that either voluntarily or under duress you found yourself on the dance floor, participating in spirited rounds of male-only dancing, clapping and shvitzing. What’s not to like!
Aish HaTorah. We spent a morning visiting Aish HaTorah’s headquarters in the Old City overlooking the Kotel (Western Wall). My friend Gavriel Kleinerman, a senior staff member of Aish, met us and took us on a tour of the facilities. One of the highlights was sitting in on a few minutes of an “Essentials” class led by the “surfer Rabbi,” R’ Yom Tov Glazer. I am sure you will agree that the instant he begins speaking Rabbi Glazer commands your attention and grabs your soul. His topic that morning was “resonance,” and his words surely resonated with me.
Aish is perhaps the world’s most successful Jewish outreach organization (with apologies to Chabad). It was founded by Rabbi Noach Weinberg 35 years ago and is responsible for bringing thousands of Jews back to Judaism. Rabbi Weinberg passed away recently but his vision lives on in all his many students, staff members and followers.
Reb Gavriel showed us the very impressive 6-story building adjacent to the Kotel plaza which (hopefully) is nearing completion. This building will house Aish’s Essentials program, Discovery program, executive learning facilities, a museum, and a library and banquet space. We took some wonderful pictures on the balconies of the building with awesome views of the Kotel, the Dome of the Rock and Mt. of Olives beyond.
Perhaps the most memorable part of the visit was the number of enthusiastic and welcoming boys and young men that we met in the Aish Yeshiva Beis Midrash. For anyone who thinks that learning Torah and good times don’t go hand in hand, a visit to Aish’s Yeshiva will quickly dispel that perception.
Mr. Kleinerman represents the face of modern Torah Judaism. He is learned in the ways of the Torah and lives according to its laws. At the same time he is a mensch, fully engaged in the “real” world and involved with Jews of all backgrounds. I hope you enjoyed spending time with him as much as I did.
The Sheva Brachas. The Schroeder-Fruchtman wedding, like all traditional Jewish weddings, was followed by seven days of celebrations, hence the name “Sheva Brachas” (Seven Blessings). We attended the first of the Sheva Brachas, held at Bracha and Avi Oberstein’s in Ramat Eshkol. In addition to music, dancing and good food, these meals give the participants a chance to “bless” the bride and groom, usually by saying a few words of Torah or doing some “shtick.” (Like the “name that tune” game that Bracha dreamed up). The whole idea is to treat the “Chosson” and “Kallah” like royalty for the week following the wedding, thus easing their entry into the “real” world once the week is done.
Let me first confess that while our itinerary seemed to develop in a more or less unhurried and unplanned fashion, in fact the main theme of the trip was thought through in advance. My unstated goal—hopefully it wasn’t too obvious—was to introduce you to individuals and experiences that would leave indelible and positive impressions of the dynamic and diverse people who lead a Torah-observant life. Hopefully you came away from the trip with an appreciation of the many and various ways in which a Jew can live a G-d-centered life of Torah without “sacrificing” his or her individual personality.
Rather than review in detail each day’s activities in journal fashion, I prefer to recount events and experiences that I think were meaningful and which I hope enhanced your appreciation of Yiddishkeit (Jewishness) and the importance of the performance of mitzvos.
The Schroeder-Fruchtman Wedding. It isn’t every day that two families from the same shul in Atlanta make a chossona (wedding) for their children living in Israel. We were fortunate enough to attend and celebrate the “wedding of the century” in a suburb of Jerusalem, in which Aaron Fruchtman and Shoshana Schroeder exchanged vows. Shoshana’s parents, Harold and Lora Schroeder, and Aaron’s Mom, Lora Fruchtman, are active and valued long-time members of Congregation Ariel as well as good friends of our family.
There is nothing that touches the heart and soul of a Jew quite like a Jewish wedding. No one who is not closed-minded or cold-hearted could fail to be moved by the the insistent heart-catching strains of the violin as the bride and groom make their way to the chuppah, the sight of the Kallah (bride) circling the Chosson (groom) seven times under the chuppah, and the sound of shattered glass signifying the completion of the vows. This particular event was held under a cool, dry Jerusalem summer sky, with a lovely breeze carrying in the sweet smell of bougainvillea.
Due to the Israeli flavor of events, the reception was casual and relaxed. I seem to recall that either voluntarily or under duress you found yourself on the dance floor, participating in spirited rounds of male-only dancing, clapping and shvitzing. What’s not to like!
Aish HaTorah. We spent a morning visiting Aish HaTorah’s headquarters in the Old City overlooking the Kotel (Western Wall). My friend Gavriel Kleinerman, a senior staff member of Aish, met us and took us on a tour of the facilities. One of the highlights was sitting in on a few minutes of an “Essentials” class led by the “surfer Rabbi,” R’ Yom Tov Glazer. I am sure you will agree that the instant he begins speaking Rabbi Glazer commands your attention and grabs your soul. His topic that morning was “resonance,” and his words surely resonated with me.
Aish is perhaps the world’s most successful Jewish outreach organization (with apologies to Chabad). It was founded by Rabbi Noach Weinberg 35 years ago and is responsible for bringing thousands of Jews back to Judaism. Rabbi Weinberg passed away recently but his vision lives on in all his many students, staff members and followers.
Reb Gavriel showed us the very impressive 6-story building adjacent to the Kotel plaza which (hopefully) is nearing completion. This building will house Aish’s Essentials program, Discovery program, executive learning facilities, a museum, and a library and banquet space. We took some wonderful pictures on the balconies of the building with awesome views of the Kotel, the Dome of the Rock and Mt. of Olives beyond.
Perhaps the most memorable part of the visit was the number of enthusiastic and welcoming boys and young men that we met in the Aish Yeshiva Beis Midrash. For anyone who thinks that learning Torah and good times don’t go hand in hand, a visit to Aish’s Yeshiva will quickly dispel that perception.
Mr. Kleinerman represents the face of modern Torah Judaism. He is learned in the ways of the Torah and lives according to its laws. At the same time he is a mensch, fully engaged in the “real” world and involved with Jews of all backgrounds. I hope you enjoyed spending time with him as much as I did.
The Sheva Brachas. The Schroeder-Fruchtman wedding, like all traditional Jewish weddings, was followed by seven days of celebrations, hence the name “Sheva Brachas” (Seven Blessings). We attended the first of the Sheva Brachas, held at Bracha and Avi Oberstein’s in Ramat Eshkol. In addition to music, dancing and good food, these meals give the participants a chance to “bless” the bride and groom, usually by saying a few words of Torah or doing some “shtick.” (Like the “name that tune” game that Bracha dreamed up). The whole idea is to treat the “Chosson” and “Kallah” like royalty for the week following the wedding, thus easing their entry into the “real” world once the week is done.
Hopefully you felt the love and warmth that was directed towards the bride and groom, and would agree that it’s not a bad way to get a marriage off on the right foot.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Jewish community's denial about Obama must stop
By Anne Bayefsky
President Barack Obama last Monday met for the first time with leaders of selected Jewish organizations and leaks from the meeting now make one thing very clear. The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world. Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the state of Israel.
This was the very first meeting with Jewish community's leaders. Earlier requests for an audience with major Jewish organizations had reportedly been ignored. Six months after taking office the president finally got around to issuing an invitation to stop the bleeding. Increasing numbers of Jews even among the overwhelming number who voted for Obama have been voicing serious concern about his real agenda.
The meeting, however, did not showcase the president's trademark engagement and dialogue routine. Instead, he decided to cherry pick his Jewish audience to include pro-Obama newcomers with little support in the mainstream Jewish world, such as J Street, while blackballing the Zionist Organization of America. The oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, with a Washington office second in size only to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was not a voice Obama wanted to hear. This leaves the president willing to engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but not ZOA President Mort Klein.
The growing alarm in the Jewish community was also something the White House was bent on covering up. They refused to put the meeting on the President's public schedule until it was outed. The White House demanded strict confidentiality and issued a terse couple of lines that it occurred when it was all over.
WAKE UP! But there is no papering over the distressing reality that emerged. The president told his listeners that he preferred putting daylight between the United States and Israel. His reported justification: "there was no light between the US and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and no progress was made."
Evidently, unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, 21 settlements and 9,000 residents counts for nothing. The Palestinian terrorist leadership and street have refused to accept a Jewish state for the past eight years (and the previous 53) because the United States did not add sufficiently to Israel's isolation.
The president apparently believes that the Palestinians are more likely to end terrorism, incitement to violence and rampant antisemitism if the United States applies more pressure on their victims. Even if Obama doesn't get it, Mahmoud Abbas does. He is now refusing to negotiate anything with the new Israeli government until Obama's settlement conditions are met.
During the meeting, the president repeatedly described his new policy in terms of one of Yasser Arafat's favorite mantras, "even-handedness." That's diplotalk for a moral equivalence between an Arab war against Jewish self-determination launched from the day of Israel's birth decades before any "occupation" and the conditions of third-generation Palestinian "refugees" kept in limbo pending Israel's destruction. But Obama's even-handedness was no slip of the tongue. In his Cairo speech, the president equated the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation."
The president promoted his strategy of putting hard public "pressure" on Israel as a means to build more credibility with Arab states. He must have meant the kind of credibility that comes from his policy of leaving an "open door" to Iran after its discredited election.
A DEM PRESIDENT BLAMING THE MEDIA? Obama then claimed that the widespread perception of an anti-Israel agenda was all the media's fault because the media is only interested in a "man-bites-dog" story. When an administration sends a US ambassador back to Syria though it is still listed as a key state sponsor of terrorism, hosts terrorist kingpins pursuing Israel's annihilation, and was caught trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the story is far-fetched alright, but true.
The president joked that Al-Jazeera often airs pictures of him wearing a yarmulke at the Western Wall. Except the photo-op during the election campaign had been intended to fool a Jewish audience that is no longer amused.
Reports also quote the president as claiming Israel has yet to "engage in serious self-reflection." Considering Israel is a democratic country forced to send its children into the armed forces for two to three years and its men into reserve duty for another twenty-five, that isn't the audacity of hope. It's just plain audacity.
There is no doubt that the pressure on Israel from the Obama administration is going to get a lot worse, as the President told the group "there is a narrow window of opportunity for advancing the peace process." Everyone understood the threat. The narrow window is Obama's self-defined political ambitions bearing no relationship to the realities of the Middle East or the welfare of either Israel or the United States.
Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Oy, Canada: What Obamacare Will Look Like
Ok, last post--today-- about healthcare. I promise.
Steven Crowder of PJTV has created a 3-minute video introduction of his much longer video expose on the Canadian national health system. Using a super-sophisticated secret taping system, Crowder takes the viewer behind the scenes of the beleagured and inefficient Canadian health system. Together with some pretty weird friends from his native Montreal, Crowder tries to get some medical attention for a minor injury from a public clinic. It is funny, but it isn't pretty.
If you have the time and patience for the full 20-minute version of the investigative video, by all means view it here.
Steven Crowder of PJTV has created a 3-minute video introduction of his much longer video expose on the Canadian national health system. Using a super-sophisticated secret taping system, Crowder takes the viewer behind the scenes of the beleagured and inefficient Canadian health system. Together with some pretty weird friends from his native Montreal, Crowder tries to get some medical attention for a minor injury from a public clinic. It is funny, but it isn't pretty.
If you have the time and patience for the full 20-minute version of the investigative video, by all means view it here.
The Lie at the Heart of Obamacare
President Obama and congressional Democrats have been claiming with straight faces that their health care "reform" plan would merely add a public insurance option to the existing array of private health insurance programs merely to introduce more "competition" into the system. (Get it? The only problem with health insurance is that it lacks enough insurance providers to promote competition, which is why the government will add one more). These officials have laughed off critics of the legislation who have been warning that the public option is designed to kill off private insurance and pave the way for a single-payer system.
With the release on Tuesday of the House Democrats' actual legislation (over 1000 pages) to radicalize the U.S. health industry, critics seem to have discovered that not only were they correct about the crowding out of the private sector, but that it will happen sooner than anyone imagined. The bill states expressly that effective on the first day of the year following the bill's passage (i.e., January 1st, 2010), individual health insurance issuers may not offer coverage to any individual unless the insurer belongs to a newly-established "Health Care Exchange." And the Health Care Exchange is nothing but a body of new regulations and restrictions on insurers that obviously will result in vastly higher costs which must be passed on to consumers via higher premiums.
According to Wednesday's Investors Business Daily editorial:
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."
What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
SO Congress's plan for reducing the cost of health care (as if that was their intent) is to increase the cost of health premiums for those of us who want to buy it from a private insurer. Since the public option plan will not be forced by competitive pressure to raise its premiums, millions will flock to it, eventually drying up the market for private plans.
As the IDB editorial said: "The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny."
The question is, once everyone is forced into the public option (everyone except union workers and the corrupt bastards in Congress), what will prevent the government from jacking up the premiums on everyone once they figure out that like Social Security and Medicare, the costs of nationalized health care are unmanageable?
Nothing. When that happens we will have lousy health care without even the satisfaction of paying less for it. Maybe if its lousy enough even Mexicans won't want to live here anymore.
With the release on Tuesday of the House Democrats' actual legislation (over 1000 pages) to radicalize the U.S. health industry, critics seem to have discovered that not only were they correct about the crowding out of the private sector, but that it will happen sooner than anyone imagined. The bill states expressly that effective on the first day of the year following the bill's passage (i.e., January 1st, 2010), individual health insurance issuers may not offer coverage to any individual unless the insurer belongs to a newly-established "Health Care Exchange." And the Health Care Exchange is nothing but a body of new regulations and restrictions on insurers that obviously will result in vastly higher costs which must be passed on to consumers via higher premiums.
According to Wednesday's Investors Business Daily editorial:
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."
What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
SO Congress's plan for reducing the cost of health care (as if that was their intent) is to increase the cost of health premiums for those of us who want to buy it from a private insurer. Since the public option plan will not be forced by competitive pressure to raise its premiums, millions will flock to it, eventually drying up the market for private plans.
As the IDB editorial said: "The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny."
The question is, once everyone is forced into the public option (everyone except union workers and the corrupt bastards in Congress), what will prevent the government from jacking up the premiums on everyone once they figure out that like Social Security and Medicare, the costs of nationalized health care are unmanageable?
Nothing. When that happens we will have lousy health care without even the satisfaction of paying less for it. Maybe if its lousy enough even Mexicans won't want to live here anymore.
Obama to New Yorkers: Pay Up
Read the story here.
I guess its only fair that New Yorkers will bear the brunt of the liberals' economic and social policies, since they voted for this stuff. Thats small comfort when you consider that the rest of us will be suffering along with them.
Palestinian State, Like it or Not
by Moshe Feiglin
This week, the EU's High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and former Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, proposed that the UN declare the establishment of a Palestinian state and accept it immediately into the United Nations as a way to end the Mid-East conflict.
Solana is just the first breach in the wall. As soon as Netanyahu accepted a two state solution in principle, nobody takes his conditions for such a state seriously. Now the world has begun to decide for us; who should be our Foreign Minister, who should be our ambassador to Egypt and soon, the world will simply create facts on the ground: a Palestinian state in Yesha that will automatically be recognized by the UN.
No need to worry, though. The "Palestinians" will reject Solana's proposal, even if it will be devoid of any restrictions and will include all of Jerusalem. A "Palestinian" state will not be established because the most ideal situation for the terror gangs of Hamas and the PLO (the Palestinian Authority, in the Orwellian language that has been forced upon Israelis) is the perpetuation of the existing reality.
Seven years ago, I penned an article called Beware: A Palestinian State in which I wrote as follows: "Nothing scares Arafat more than the establishment of a Palestinian state. It scares him so much that when he was offered everything - including Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and including Israeli sovereign territory in the Negev - he started a war. It sounds strange and illogical. He has been fighting all his life for these territories! But a rational analysis of his behavior leads inevitably to this conclusion. Just as the Oslo Accords are not a peace agreement at all, so the "Palestinian struggle" is not a struggle for liberation at all." Click here for full article.
Cossacks do not run countries. Robbers cannot produce anything themselves. They need a source that will continue to produce so that they can continue to rob. When Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything, he quickly started a war. The last thing he wanted was a state.
The "Palestinians" do not want a state. But right now, conditions are being created in which the state they do not want will be established against their will by the UN - and or by Israel.
Moshe Feiglin is the founder of the Jewish Leadership Movement, the largest bloc within the Likud party in Israel. Feiglin and his supporters believe in promoting leaders for Israel who are guided by Jewish religious belief and values. www.jewishisrael.org
This week, the EU's High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and former Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, proposed that the UN declare the establishment of a Palestinian state and accept it immediately into the United Nations as a way to end the Mid-East conflict.
Solana is just the first breach in the wall. As soon as Netanyahu accepted a two state solution in principle, nobody takes his conditions for such a state seriously. Now the world has begun to decide for us; who should be our Foreign Minister, who should be our ambassador to Egypt and soon, the world will simply create facts on the ground: a Palestinian state in Yesha that will automatically be recognized by the UN.
No need to worry, though. The "Palestinians" will reject Solana's proposal, even if it will be devoid of any restrictions and will include all of Jerusalem. A "Palestinian" state will not be established because the most ideal situation for the terror gangs of Hamas and the PLO (the Palestinian Authority, in the Orwellian language that has been forced upon Israelis) is the perpetuation of the existing reality.
Seven years ago, I penned an article called Beware: A Palestinian State in which I wrote as follows: "Nothing scares Arafat more than the establishment of a Palestinian state. It scares him so much that when he was offered everything - including Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and including Israeli sovereign territory in the Negev - he started a war. It sounds strange and illogical. He has been fighting all his life for these territories! But a rational analysis of his behavior leads inevitably to this conclusion. Just as the Oslo Accords are not a peace agreement at all, so the "Palestinian struggle" is not a struggle for liberation at all." Click here for full article.
Cossacks do not run countries. Robbers cannot produce anything themselves. They need a source that will continue to produce so that they can continue to rob. When Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything, he quickly started a war. The last thing he wanted was a state.
The "Palestinians" do not want a state. But right now, conditions are being created in which the state they do not want will be established against their will by the UN - and or by Israel.
Moshe Feiglin is the founder of the Jewish Leadership Movement, the largest bloc within the Likud party in Israel. Feiglin and his supporters believe in promoting leaders for Israel who are guided by Jewish religious belief and values. www.jewishisrael.org
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Time for GOP Senators to Man Up
From Dick Morris:
Only the Senate and House Republicans can save Obama now by compromising and lending his extremist legislation the veneer of bipartisanship in order to remove it as a political issue...The question for Republicans is simple: By lending Obama Republican votes, in return for minor concessions, they are letting him escape the inevitable political damage these issues will cause. There is a time for triangulation, but now is the time to stand firm in strong opposition and not to be bought off by compromises.
Only the Senate and House Republicans can save Obama now by compromising and lending his extremist legislation the veneer of bipartisanship in order to remove it as a political issue...The question for Republicans is simple: By lending Obama Republican votes, in return for minor concessions, they are letting him escape the inevitable political damage these issues will cause. There is a time for triangulation, but now is the time to stand firm in strong opposition and not to be bought off by compromises.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Inflation versus Deflation
From Chris Martenson at Chrismartenson.com:
"Inflation correlates poorly with growth in the monetary base, making that statistic relatively useless as a predictor of inflation. However, inflation correlates extremely well with growth in government spending, meaning that we'd do well to track that statistic closely.
The current economic crisis is being fought tooth and nail by a determined Federal Reserve (in the role of the "enabler") and an equally-determined US government (in the role of the heavy-lifter, assuming all the lion's share of the long-term debt and risk). Together, these institutions have virtually consigned future generations to the enormous challenge of wrestling with bloated budgets in desperate need of trimming, further compounded by coinciding with periods of high inflation.
If pressed, I would explain that the policy responses to this crisis are rooted in a cultural mindset of 'kicking the can down the road.' Instead of dealing with the pain caused by past excesses in a forthright and honest manner, preference has been demonstrated for piling on additional liabilities and pushing them ahead at the expense of the future.
If/when even these 'heroic' measures fail, we will discover not only that we've made things far worse than they otherwise would have been, but also that we wasted valuable time, money and political capital vainly attempting to rescue something that not only could not be preserved, but was not even worth preserving.
It is impossible to predict exactly when inflation will hit. It may not descend until a few years from now, or its impact might be felt before the end of the year. Even if inflation is a few years away, now is the time to begin preparing yourself, your holdings, and your portfolio for inflation's arrival. When it comes to preserving purchasing power in a high inflation environment, not all assets are created equally.Business owners, it is time to begin thinking about how high inflation will impact your operations. It will be difficult for many business owners to balance operational cash flows with employees' need for increased salaries to mitigate inflation's impact.
Finally, given the fact that any possible economic recovery will run into the twin walls of outstanding debt and energy limitations, I must conclude that the probability of destructive inflation (or stagflation) far outweighs the likelihood of benign inflation."
"Inflation correlates poorly with growth in the monetary base, making that statistic relatively useless as a predictor of inflation. However, inflation correlates extremely well with growth in government spending, meaning that we'd do well to track that statistic closely.
The current economic crisis is being fought tooth and nail by a determined Federal Reserve (in the role of the "enabler") and an equally-determined US government (in the role of the heavy-lifter, assuming all the lion's share of the long-term debt and risk). Together, these institutions have virtually consigned future generations to the enormous challenge of wrestling with bloated budgets in desperate need of trimming, further compounded by coinciding with periods of high inflation.
If pressed, I would explain that the policy responses to this crisis are rooted in a cultural mindset of 'kicking the can down the road.' Instead of dealing with the pain caused by past excesses in a forthright and honest manner, preference has been demonstrated for piling on additional liabilities and pushing them ahead at the expense of the future.
If/when even these 'heroic' measures fail, we will discover not only that we've made things far worse than they otherwise would have been, but also that we wasted valuable time, money and political capital vainly attempting to rescue something that not only could not be preserved, but was not even worth preserving.
It is impossible to predict exactly when inflation will hit. It may not descend until a few years from now, or its impact might be felt before the end of the year. Even if inflation is a few years away, now is the time to begin preparing yourself, your holdings, and your portfolio for inflation's arrival. When it comes to preserving purchasing power in a high inflation environment, not all assets are created equally.Business owners, it is time to begin thinking about how high inflation will impact your operations. It will be difficult for many business owners to balance operational cash flows with employees' need for increased salaries to mitigate inflation's impact.
Finally, given the fact that any possible economic recovery will run into the twin walls of outstanding debt and energy limitations, I must conclude that the probability of destructive inflation (or stagflation) far outweighs the likelihood of benign inflation."
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Carter in Love
From the June 13 edition of the Jerusalem Post:Former US President Jimmy Carter was honored by the Palestinian Authority government Saturday (June 13) and pledged to support the Palestinians' campaign for independence to the end of his days.
"I have been in love with the Palestinian people for many years,"
he said Saturday, adding that this is a feeling shared by members of his family.
"I have two great-grandsons that are rapidly learning about
the people here and the anguish and suffering and deprivation of human rights
that you have experienced ever since 1948," he said.Referring to President Barack Obama's call for an Israeli settlement freeze, Carter said that "in the future, I am sure, he will call for the dismantling of the settlements that exist."
Carter, 85, pledged his "assistance, as long as I live, to win your
freedom, your independence, your sovereignty and a good life.Is there a more vile human being on the planet? It isn't
enough that Carter facilitated the downfall of the Shah 30 years ago and ushered
in the thugs who now murder innocent Iranians without consequence. Now he
spends his remaining days engineering the creation of an apartheid state
whose charter calls for the destruction of Jews. And to top it all
off, he has proudly infected his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren
with his sickness.Oh happy will be the day when the earth is rid of this fetid twisted soul.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Elections Have Consequences
The U.S. House of Representatives this evening passed the largest tax increase and job killer in U.S. history.
It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met. Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Read Mr. Lieberman's testimony to the Senate Republican Conference on June 22.
Yes, my friends, elections do have consequences.
It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met. Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Read Mr. Lieberman's testimony to the Senate Republican Conference on June 22.
Yes, my friends, elections do have consequences.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Iran Round-Up
The King of Pop is dead. But the saturation coverage of it lives on. So you may have missed these pieces of commentary and opinion about the Iran election protests:
Hope and Change in Iran. Cliff May of the Foundation in Defense of Democracies (FDD) was a foreign correspondent who was posted in Teheran 30 years ago during the first elections held after the Islamic revolution. He recalls being skeptical of the idea that Khomeini would bring openness and freedom to Iran, while many of the wiser and older veteran journalists believed that the revolution would bring sweetness and light to the country. It turns out that May and others who saw the regime for what it is were right. Under Khomeini's revolution Iran saw "more people executed, imprisoned, and driven into exile than under the shah, egregious violations of human rights, sponsorship of terrorism, Holocaust denial, and genocidal threats." In response, says May, today's Iranian demonstrators "are waging a revolution for hope that has been denied and change that, it seemed, would never come." The least that Obama could do is to lend them moral support.
Iranian Women Leading the Way. Michael Ledeen, the Iran expert at FDD and author of a number of books about Iran's nuclear ambitions, notes that women are playing a lead role in the protests against the Iranian theocracy. Women pose a threat to the regime, which is why they have been subjected to verbal attacks, violence and death. Ledeen even suggests that the targeting and killing of Neda Soltan (the now-famous young woman whose murder by the regime's authorities was captured on video) was an intentional act of intimidation and misogyny by the mullahs against all Iranian women. Ledeen also reports on what he sees as "cracks in the regime" based on reports of a major confab in Qom by some senior ayatollahs unhappy with the status quo.
The Obama Effect. Columnist Caroline Glick notes that the coverage by the media of the Iran story shows the tragic consequences of a media willing to "abandon the basic responsibilities of a free press in favor of acting as propagandists for the president." Even Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, both adored by the press, faced a healthy degree of media skepticism and resistance. The media's sycophancy isn't just reflected in the positive attention it gives the president, but also in its selective reporting on important events, like the Iran crisis. This in turn denies the public the information it needs to make informed decisions about the world. Says Glick, "It is due to the media's historic role in maintaining and cultivating an informed discussion and debate about current affairs that they became known as democracy's watchdog. When media organs fail to fulfill their basic responsibilities, they degenerate quickly into democracy's undertaker. "
The End of the Beginning. Roger Cohen writing in The New York Times asserts five reason why the fundamentalist regime in Iran is weakened if not doomed. One reason is that the once lofty Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini now has been exposed as nothing more than a "ruthless infighter" to his own people and has lost whatever prophet-like aura he had maintained. Another is that the "soft" intimidation of the Iranian people by the regime will now morph into brutal repression, which will create further anger and resistance among the people. A third reason is that post-"Neda," the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad about "truth and ethics" will ring hollow in the international community. Cohen fails to mention the utter absurdity of Barack Obama's Iran engagement policy in the wake of the post-election actions of the regime.
Obama’s Iran Policy Is a Bomb. So says Jonah Goldberg at The National Review, who-- unlike Cohen-- calls Obama out on his now-defunct Iran policy. Obama apparently clings to hope that he can still talk the mullahs out of their nukes. This will not work, says Goldberg, since even the President's staunchest supporters are repulsed by the brutal nature of the ayatollahs. If the regime prevails, says Goldberg, "anyone who shakes Ahmadinejad’s hands will have a hard time washing the blood off his own."
Let Them Eat Ice Cream. In her inimitable style Ann Coulter calls Obama spineless in his failure to support the Iranian uprising. But why try to paraphrase Ann Coulter when you can read her column right here? (Best line: "you might be a scaredy-cat if...the president of France is talking tougher than you."
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
My Open Letter to Senator Menendez
Dear Senator Menendez,
As a politically conservative Jew with a strong attachment to Israel, I commend you, a liberal non-Jewish congressional Democrat, for your strong public stance in favor of the Jewish State. Your speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, widely circulated on “YouTube,” directly contradicts the sentiments of our President vis-a-vis Israel as expressed in his June 4th Cairo speech and in other contexts. I hope and pray that your forceful rejoinder to the President’s mischaracterization of Israel’s founding premise his ushers in a growing chorus of similar repudiations of the President’s Israel policy from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike.
In light of the heinous act of violence by James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi anti-Semite who murdered the security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum the other week, you are quite correct in your assertion that anti-Semitism has not been eliminated. You rightly condemned anti-Jewish words and deeds in America, Europe and the Middle East. But I was especially gratified by your focus on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, which has unfortunately been called into question at the highest levels of government.
Barack Obama asserted that Israel’s founding in 1948 as an independent state was a direct result of centuries of oppression of Jews in Europe culminating in the virtual elimination of European Jewry by the murderous Nazis. Superficially a condemnation of the Jew-hatred that resulted in the Shoah, Obama’s locution was in fact designed to plant the seed of doubt about Israel’s legitimacy in the Middle East. According to his view, Israel’s existence is nothing but an artifact of European post-war guilt. Why should Arabs continue to suffer for the misdeeds of Germany and its sympathizers when Jews are perpetrating morally reprehensible acts of their own against Arabs?
In a powerful riposte you made the undeniable case that modern Israel’s re-establishment as a nation-state is rooted not in the Holocaust but in events occurring in the time of Abraham: “The argument for Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on what we say in speeches…it has been made by history.” You acknowledge that Israel’s legitimacy has been further secured by “the men and women who have made the desert green… by Nobel Prizes earned…by lives saved…democracy defended…peace made and battles won.” From your own experiences in Israel you know that in the heart of every Jew is a strong yearning for peace.
The Arabs have invented a narrative that insists that in anticipation of its declaration of independence in 1948 the Jews of Israel forcibly evicted the Arabs of “Palestine” from their homes. Many Americans—non-Jews and Jews alike--are unaware that this Naqba –“catastrophe”-- did not happen. This is not to deny that isolated acts of brutality and terror by Jews occurred during this time period. But as historian Mitchell Bard points out, “The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-48 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.”
To listen to President Obama, it would appear that he has bought into the Arab false narrative without reservation, which explains his willingness to solve the Arab “refugee” crisis at Israel’s expense. You, however, pointed out that while 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel either voluntarily or under pressure from leaders of the surrounding Arab countries, an equal number of Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands they called home for a millennium. At last check no Jew has asked these countries for reparations, territorial concessions or a right of return.
Unlike President Obama, who apparently believes an irredentist terror group like Hamas, which currently “governs Gaza,” can be brought into a unity government with Fatah and negotiate peace with Israel as its equal, you state correctly that there is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas:
Israel is a sovereign democratic state of Jews, Muslims and Christians…Hamas is a terrorist organization which won control of Gaza when men in ski masks waged gun battles with another branch of Palestinians. Hamas then used their control of Gaza to launch rockets at sleeping children in Israeli cities. This is the thanks Israel got for withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas does not recognize agreements that Palestinian leaders have made with Israel, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist at all and in fact is ideologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.
I wish that our President and his Secretary of State were possessed of such simple moral clarity. Instead they insist that Israeli citizens stop building in their towns and cities while Palestinians “assassinate [Israel’s] people with rockets and its national character with poisonous rhetoric.” While our Secretary of State doles out a billion dollars to Gaza, its bloody regime continues to import arms financed by Iran and Syria with the help of Egypt and Sudan for the sole purpose of killing innocent Jews.
President Obama says he is “moved” by normal Iranian citizens who risk their lives to protest a stolen election (and the Islamist theocracy), yet insists on “engaging” the brutal regime once they finish cracking the skulls of its citizens. By Obama’s lights the mullahs can be persuaded to give up their nuclear aspirations if only they will sit down across the table from him.
Indeed Israel is in your words a “rose in a desert rampant with repression.” Obama sees Israel as the problem; you see it correctly as the solution to the problem of Arab fundamentalism and extremism. As you said, “we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.”
Sadly, many in the world and even in our own country would attempt just that—to blur the line between the forces of good and evil. Our President specializes in hiding his anti-Israel bias under the cloak of “evenhandedness.” It is not evenhanded to suggest that the life of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation” is or has been anything like the extermination of the Jews under Hitler. It is the cheapest kind of moral equivalency. It is editing history.
May you be blessed by the God of Israel with the strength and courage to keep standing for Israel and the Jewish people.
Sincerely,
Scott Italiaander
As a politically conservative Jew with a strong attachment to Israel, I commend you, a liberal non-Jewish congressional Democrat, for your strong public stance in favor of the Jewish State. Your speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, widely circulated on “YouTube,” directly contradicts the sentiments of our President vis-a-vis Israel as expressed in his June 4th Cairo speech and in other contexts. I hope and pray that your forceful rejoinder to the President’s mischaracterization of Israel’s founding premise his ushers in a growing chorus of similar repudiations of the President’s Israel policy from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike.
In light of the heinous act of violence by James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi anti-Semite who murdered the security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum the other week, you are quite correct in your assertion that anti-Semitism has not been eliminated. You rightly condemned anti-Jewish words and deeds in America, Europe and the Middle East. But I was especially gratified by your focus on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, which has unfortunately been called into question at the highest levels of government.
Barack Obama asserted that Israel’s founding in 1948 as an independent state was a direct result of centuries of oppression of Jews in Europe culminating in the virtual elimination of European Jewry by the murderous Nazis. Superficially a condemnation of the Jew-hatred that resulted in the Shoah, Obama’s locution was in fact designed to plant the seed of doubt about Israel’s legitimacy in the Middle East. According to his view, Israel’s existence is nothing but an artifact of European post-war guilt. Why should Arabs continue to suffer for the misdeeds of Germany and its sympathizers when Jews are perpetrating morally reprehensible acts of their own against Arabs?
In a powerful riposte you made the undeniable case that modern Israel’s re-establishment as a nation-state is rooted not in the Holocaust but in events occurring in the time of Abraham: “The argument for Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on what we say in speeches…it has been made by history.” You acknowledge that Israel’s legitimacy has been further secured by “the men and women who have made the desert green… by Nobel Prizes earned…by lives saved…democracy defended…peace made and battles won.” From your own experiences in Israel you know that in the heart of every Jew is a strong yearning for peace.
The Arabs have invented a narrative that insists that in anticipation of its declaration of independence in 1948 the Jews of Israel forcibly evicted the Arabs of “Palestine” from their homes. Many Americans—non-Jews and Jews alike--are unaware that this Naqba –“catastrophe”-- did not happen. This is not to deny that isolated acts of brutality and terror by Jews occurred during this time period. But as historian Mitchell Bard points out, “The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-48 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.”
To listen to President Obama, it would appear that he has bought into the Arab false narrative without reservation, which explains his willingness to solve the Arab “refugee” crisis at Israel’s expense. You, however, pointed out that while 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel either voluntarily or under pressure from leaders of the surrounding Arab countries, an equal number of Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands they called home for a millennium. At last check no Jew has asked these countries for reparations, territorial concessions or a right of return.
Unlike President Obama, who apparently believes an irredentist terror group like Hamas, which currently “governs Gaza,” can be brought into a unity government with Fatah and negotiate peace with Israel as its equal, you state correctly that there is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas:
Israel is a sovereign democratic state of Jews, Muslims and Christians…Hamas is a terrorist organization which won control of Gaza when men in ski masks waged gun battles with another branch of Palestinians. Hamas then used their control of Gaza to launch rockets at sleeping children in Israeli cities. This is the thanks Israel got for withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas does not recognize agreements that Palestinian leaders have made with Israel, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist at all and in fact is ideologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.
I wish that our President and his Secretary of State were possessed of such simple moral clarity. Instead they insist that Israeli citizens stop building in their towns and cities while Palestinians “assassinate [Israel’s] people with rockets and its national character with poisonous rhetoric.” While our Secretary of State doles out a billion dollars to Gaza, its bloody regime continues to import arms financed by Iran and Syria with the help of Egypt and Sudan for the sole purpose of killing innocent Jews.
President Obama says he is “moved” by normal Iranian citizens who risk their lives to protest a stolen election (and the Islamist theocracy), yet insists on “engaging” the brutal regime once they finish cracking the skulls of its citizens. By Obama’s lights the mullahs can be persuaded to give up their nuclear aspirations if only they will sit down across the table from him.
Indeed Israel is in your words a “rose in a desert rampant with repression.” Obama sees Israel as the problem; you see it correctly as the solution to the problem of Arab fundamentalism and extremism. As you said, “we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.”
Sadly, many in the world and even in our own country would attempt just that—to blur the line between the forces of good and evil. Our President specializes in hiding his anti-Israel bias under the cloak of “evenhandedness.” It is not evenhanded to suggest that the life of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation” is or has been anything like the extermination of the Jews under Hitler. It is the cheapest kind of moral equivalency. It is editing history.
May you be blessed by the God of Israel with the strength and courage to keep standing for Israel and the Jewish people.
Sincerely,
Scott Italiaander
Sunday, June 21, 2009
"All The News That Fits...Our Agenda"
That should be the real motto of The New York Times. Blogger and writer Roger L. Simon, founder of center-right Pajamas Media, sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in 20th century history, and how it was distorted by Stalin apologist Walter Duranty, The Times' top foreign corrrespondent circa 1932.
Sadly, not much has changed at The Gray Lady. To this day the newspaper refuses to consider returning the Pulitzer awarded to Duranty in 1932, even though his lies and falsehoods in downplaying the Stalin-induced Ukranian famine of the 1930s are widely acknowledged. If the "paper of record" one day falls under the weight of its accumulated breaches of journalistic integrity and agenda-driven reporting, the Sulzberger-Ochs family will have no one to blame but themselves.
Take 6 minutes and view Roger's second installment of "Burning down The New York Times." (think Jayson Blair).
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Debt: A Visual Aid for the Math Impaired
A year ago liberals and conservatives alike excoriated George Bush for spending money like Paris Hilton on a bender. Of course, way back then we were all a little naive, believing as we did that a $450 billion fiscal year deficit was outrageous and irresponsible.
Apparently liberals have had a change of heart, now that their patron saint is president. With an FY 2009 projected deficit of almost $2 trillion, and a 10-year accumulated deficit projected by Obama's own budget team at $1o trillion, liberal outrage at spending has been strangely absent. You know, like liberal outrage over David Letterman's sexist "slut" jokes about Sarah Palin's daughter.
Next time a liberal tells you how all Obama is doing is trying to get us out of the mess that George Bush got us into, you might want to send him this two-and-a-half-minute visual aid and then ask him exactly how what Obama is doing is going to make anything better.
(HT: Chuck Stein).
Apparently liberals have had a change of heart, now that their patron saint is president. With an FY 2009 projected deficit of almost $2 trillion, and a 10-year accumulated deficit projected by Obama's own budget team at $1o trillion, liberal outrage at spending has been strangely absent. You know, like liberal outrage over David Letterman's sexist "slut" jokes about Sarah Palin's daughter.
Next time a liberal tells you how all Obama is doing is trying to get us out of the mess that George Bush got us into, you might want to send him this two-and-a-half-minute visual aid and then ask him exactly how what Obama is doing is going to make anything better.
(HT: Chuck Stein).
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Obama's Muslim Outreach Fails First Test
Only an American administration headed by an utterly arrogant and naive ideologue could have asserted that the Iranian elections were characterized by a "robust debate" which will advance the U.S.'s ability to engage Iran in "new ways." This assertion rings hollow not just because the administration's preferred candidate lost in a rigged election. Even if the so-called "reformist" Mir Hossein Mousavi had won he would have likely followed the party line (and there is only one party in Teheran) laid out by the mullahs, the real bosses of Iran.
Of course Mousavi did not win, and the fact that Team Obama thought he could betrays either a stunning failure of intelligence vis-a-vis events in Iran or a shocking inability to understand the world as it really is. More than likely it wasn't the intelligence that was faulty, it was the way it was massaged by the utopians who populate the State Department and the White House's National Security Council. Using the Left's own derisive characterization of the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq, the Obamacons politicized the intelligence.
Notwithstanding the outcome of the Iranian election (which the nutty Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by an apparent landslide), Obama's faux-visionary "Hope and Change" routine has morphed pathetically into "Hope for Change." Obama gives a speech in Cairo 10 days ago in which he hails Islam's "tolerance" and its indispensable contributions to humanity that his minions in government and the media hope will result in sweeping change throughout the Muslim world. (I am a little fuzzy on the need for all this change when according to Obama all is fine and dandy in Islam). This is wishing against the evidence that mere words (as long as they are Obama's) can change the directional flow of human nature and thus change the course of human events to Obama's liking.
If the election results were not a definitive rebuke to those who engage in such wishful thinking, then the events immediately following should be. According to reports, "by Saturday afternoon, riot police and Revolutionary Guards thugs were clashing with thousands of protesters who surged onto the streets of Tehran after their defeated hero, Mousavi, said he strongly protests 'the many obvious violations that could lead to tyranny in Iran.' The Iranian government has blocked Mousavi's ability to communicate to his supporter via text messaging and has refused to allow him access to Iranian TV. Even the "BBC," the Left-leaning British government controlled media, reported that their satellite has been jammed by the Iranians, preventing them from transmitting to its Persian and Middle east viewers the true state of affairs in post-election Iran.
When asked about such irregularities, including the blocking of the publication of allegations of election fraud by Mousavi's house newspaper, Ahmadinejad abjured his questioner not to worry about such things as press freedoms. ""Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."
Perhaps this is the Iranian regime's understanding of "robust debate." And yet it is unlikely that any of these gross displays of power and intimidation will in any way dissuade Obama from attempting to "dialogue" with the rogue regime.
And all of this comes at a time when Iran threatens Israel daily with nuclear destruction while North Korea seems determined to ratchet up the pressure on the Obama administration by threatening a nuclear confrontation if Obama enforces the U.N. Security Council's sanctions against the country. It is no coincidence that America's enemies are probing our new president for weakness, just as V.P. Biden said they would. It is apparent to them that President Obama has no stomach for standing up to those who would threaten us.
It is becoming increasing obvious that Obama is as clueless when it comes to the nature of dictatorial regimes (other than his own, at least) as he is when it comes to fiscal and economic policy. In either case such detachment from reality is dangerous. But with regard to our dealings with apocalyptic regimes like Iran and North Korea, Obama's flight from reality can be downright catastrophic.
Of course Mousavi did not win, and the fact that Team Obama thought he could betrays either a stunning failure of intelligence vis-a-vis events in Iran or a shocking inability to understand the world as it really is. More than likely it wasn't the intelligence that was faulty, it was the way it was massaged by the utopians who populate the State Department and the White House's National Security Council. Using the Left's own derisive characterization of the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq, the Obamacons politicized the intelligence.
Notwithstanding the outcome of the Iranian election (which the nutty Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by an apparent landslide), Obama's faux-visionary "Hope and Change" routine has morphed pathetically into "Hope for Change." Obama gives a speech in Cairo 10 days ago in which he hails Islam's "tolerance" and its indispensable contributions to humanity that his minions in government and the media hope will result in sweeping change throughout the Muslim world. (I am a little fuzzy on the need for all this change when according to Obama all is fine and dandy in Islam). This is wishing against the evidence that mere words (as long as they are Obama's) can change the directional flow of human nature and thus change the course of human events to Obama's liking.
If the election results were not a definitive rebuke to those who engage in such wishful thinking, then the events immediately following should be. According to reports, "by Saturday afternoon, riot police and Revolutionary Guards thugs were clashing with thousands of protesters who surged onto the streets of Tehran after their defeated hero, Mousavi, said he strongly protests 'the many obvious violations that could lead to tyranny in Iran.' The Iranian government has blocked Mousavi's ability to communicate to his supporter via text messaging and has refused to allow him access to Iranian TV. Even the "BBC," the Left-leaning British government controlled media, reported that their satellite has been jammed by the Iranians, preventing them from transmitting to its Persian and Middle east viewers the true state of affairs in post-election Iran.
When asked about such irregularities, including the blocking of the publication of allegations of election fraud by Mousavi's house newspaper, Ahmadinejad abjured his questioner not to worry about such things as press freedoms. ""Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."
Perhaps this is the Iranian regime's understanding of "robust debate." And yet it is unlikely that any of these gross displays of power and intimidation will in any way dissuade Obama from attempting to "dialogue" with the rogue regime.
And all of this comes at a time when Iran threatens Israel daily with nuclear destruction while North Korea seems determined to ratchet up the pressure on the Obama administration by threatening a nuclear confrontation if Obama enforces the U.N. Security Council's sanctions against the country. It is no coincidence that America's enemies are probing our new president for weakness, just as V.P. Biden said they would. It is apparent to them that President Obama has no stomach for standing up to those who would threaten us.
It is becoming increasing obvious that Obama is as clueless when it comes to the nature of dictatorial regimes (other than his own, at least) as he is when it comes to fiscal and economic policy. In either case such detachment from reality is dangerous. But with regard to our dealings with apocalyptic regimes like Iran and North Korea, Obama's flight from reality can be downright catastrophic.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
"We are going to change the world. Please, don't interfere."
So said an American official to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, according to Israel's Channel One televison. Netanyahu's aides reportedly took that as a "threat."
Ya think?
Ya think?
Monday, June 8, 2009
Europe swings Right as depression deepens
So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the U.K. Telegraph's International Business Editor based in London, in his business blog Monday. He notes that in European parliamentary elections "left-wing incumbents in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and of course Britain were either slaughtered, or badly mauled." Evans-Pritchard is not quite sure why, given the "ultimate crisis of capitalism" so many of the "blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right," but he suspects rising unemployment is the key to it all.
Evans-Pritchard was an early economic doom-and-gloomer, and remains so even while most economists and pundits keep tending those 'green shoots" we keep hearing about. He believes that the deficit countries (U.S., U.K., Spain, etc.) have sharply increased their savings rate and thus reduced consumption while the "surplus countries" of China, Japan and Germany have not stimulated demand sufficient to offset this. According to Evans-Pritchard the global system is in depression, with a potentially devastating "Stage II" still to come (a la 1932 after the "green shoots" of 1930-31).
Speaking of green shoots, Evans-Pritchard concludes his recent piece with this:
Don't count on the political fabric of Europe holding together if our green shoots shrivel and die in the credit drought of the long hot rainless summer that lies ahead.
Evans-Pritchard was an early economic doom-and-gloomer, and remains so even while most economists and pundits keep tending those 'green shoots" we keep hearing about. He believes that the deficit countries (U.S., U.K., Spain, etc.) have sharply increased their savings rate and thus reduced consumption while the "surplus countries" of China, Japan and Germany have not stimulated demand sufficient to offset this. According to Evans-Pritchard the global system is in depression, with a potentially devastating "Stage II" still to come (a la 1932 after the "green shoots" of 1930-31).
Speaking of green shoots, Evans-Pritchard concludes his recent piece with this:
Don't count on the political fabric of Europe holding together if our green shoots shrivel and die in the credit drought of the long hot rainless summer that lies ahead.
Tough stuff. You won't find that sort of frankness in the American business press.
Obama in Wonderland
I read parts of President Obama's appalling "Muslim outreach" speech given last week in Cairo but haven't watched the whole thing...yet. I heard it was almost an hour long and I'd rather take a root canal without Novacaine than sit through that.
Thanks to columnist and military expert Ralph Peters I may never have to. He has delivered a devastatingly sarcastic piece summarizing the whole dismal thing. Peters says thanks to Obama's speech he has learned quite a lot about Islam that he never knew before, like “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance” and “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He wonders how the Founding Fathers missed that last part.
Peters most pungent line is in response to Obama's statement that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable.” "Yup," says Peters, "And they're issued by Chrysler."
Thanks to columnist and military expert Ralph Peters I may never have to. He has delivered a devastatingly sarcastic piece summarizing the whole dismal thing. Peters says thanks to Obama's speech he has learned quite a lot about Islam that he never knew before, like “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance” and “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He wonders how the Founding Fathers missed that last part.
Peters most pungent line is in response to Obama's statement that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable.” "Yup," says Peters, "And they're issued by Chrysler."
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Proven Wrong in Less Than a Day?
Yes, its true...I may have to admit that I erred. In Wednesday's post about journalist Caroline Glick's PJTV interview in advance of Obama's speech yesterday, I mentioned security policy expert Frank Gaffney's prediction that once Obama's policies vis a vis Israel come to light, the president will encounter resistance even from liberals in Congress. I pooh-pooed that as a "faint hope," in that liberals in Congress seemed quite ok with Obama's Middle East policies.
Today Politico.com reports that some Congressional liberals are indeed chafing at Obama's audacious bid to change drastically America's Israel policy, especially the pressure being brought to bear on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Rep. Anthony Wiener, a reliably liberal New York Democrat, said: “There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line." Even the rabid defender of Obama policy Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida takes issue with the administration's broad definition of "settlements."
Democrats, or some of them anyway, apparently think it is unwise for Obama to be equating the relatively small issue of Israeli settlement expansion with Palestinian terrorism, Arab hostility to Israel and Iranian intransigence in regard to the nuclear issue. They are not likely to be comforted by Obama's Cairo speech, which continued the moral equivalence game to an outrageous degree, in effect blaming Israel for the "intolerable" plight of the Palestinians.
So it does appear, as Gaffney suggested, that there is a growing reluctance among Democrats to support fully Obama's new Israel policy, at least at the margins. Whether that reluctance will lead to full-throated resistance, or whether in any event it will have any effect on Obama's headlong rush into the arms of the enemies of freedom, is an open question.
Today Politico.com reports that some Congressional liberals are indeed chafing at Obama's audacious bid to change drastically America's Israel policy, especially the pressure being brought to bear on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Rep. Anthony Wiener, a reliably liberal New York Democrat, said: “There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line." Even the rabid defender of Obama policy Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida takes issue with the administration's broad definition of "settlements."
Democrats, or some of them anyway, apparently think it is unwise for Obama to be equating the relatively small issue of Israeli settlement expansion with Palestinian terrorism, Arab hostility to Israel and Iranian intransigence in regard to the nuclear issue. They are not likely to be comforted by Obama's Cairo speech, which continued the moral equivalence game to an outrageous degree, in effect blaming Israel for the "intolerable" plight of the Palestinians.
So it does appear, as Gaffney suggested, that there is a growing reluctance among Democrats to support fully Obama's new Israel policy, at least at the margins. Whether that reluctance will lead to full-throated resistance, or whether in any event it will have any effect on Obama's headlong rush into the arms of the enemies of freedom, is an open question.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
June 4th, 2009: Day of Infamy?
Tomorrow, one day before the 42d anniversary of the famed "Six-Day War" between Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it, Barack Obama will deliver an address in Egypt, the primary antagonist and big loser of that war. While only Obama and his advisers know what is in the speech, it is not hard to predict that it will be dismaying to Israel's leaders and citizens, and millions of Jews elsewhere. Not only will Obama reiterate the themes of his interview with Al-Arabiya Arab television early in his presidency in which he advocated closer ties between America and the Arab-Islamic world, but he will likely use the speech to signal to Israel's friends and foes alike that the "special relationship" between the U.S. Israel is drawing to a close.
On the eve of this historic event it would be well to take time to watch this 15- minute PJTV interview of The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick. Ms. Glick is known to many who follow security issues in the the Middle East and in particular Israel for her insight and moral clarity with respect to the threats facing Israel and the West. Like her writing style, her tone and demeanor is direct, dry and humorless, which tracks rather well with her downbeat outlook on a depressing series of events. Nevertheless, I think her assessment of the current state of play between the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world is, regrettably, dead on.
Some examples:
In the meantime, if as predicted Obama's Cairo speech is the opening salvo in a campaign to marginalize Israel, then tomorrow, June 4th, 2009, will truly be a day of infamy.
On the eve of this historic event it would be well to take time to watch this 15- minute PJTV interview of The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick. Ms. Glick is known to many who follow security issues in the the Middle East and in particular Israel for her insight and moral clarity with respect to the threats facing Israel and the West. Like her writing style, her tone and demeanor is direct, dry and humorless, which tracks rather well with her downbeat outlook on a depressing series of events. Nevertheless, I think her assessment of the current state of play between the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world is, regrettably, dead on.
Some examples:
--Obama is intentionally engineering a crisis in U.S. relations with Israel in advance of Obama's trip to the Middle East. The crisis is designed to marginalize the Israeli government in the hopes that it will crack (fall) under the pressure.
--It is now American policy to forcibly remove almost a million Jews from their homes in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, the historical biblical lands of the Israelites) to make way for an "apartheid" Arab state in which no Jew will be permitted.
--America is openly and clearly overturning a range of strategic agreements with Israel established under previous American administrations (Democrat and Republican alike), but particularly understandings with President Bush concerning Israel's security and borders.
--The U.S. policy is now abject appeasement of the Arab world, and Israel is the "currency" we are using to do this.
--Rahm Emanuel (about whom I wrote in this space several weeks ago) is Obama's hatchet man in implementing this policy. He is actively trying to destabilize the Netanyahu government by pressuring American (liberal) Jewish organizations to criticize Israel's policies regarding settlements and borders as well as control of Jerusalem's holy sites. In effect Emanuel is trading on Obama's popularity among American Jews in order to convince them to sell out Israel.
--Obama has raised the possibility of sanctions on Israel if it doesn't follow Obama's demands on halting settlements. He has also suggested that the U.S. cannot be counted on to veto anti-Israel resolutions in the U.N.
--Palestinian leader Abbas continues to incite his populace against Israel and has not one iota of interest in peace with the Jewish state. He refuses even to entertain the notion that Israel would or should retain its Jewish character.
--The fact that there is no one among the Palestinians with whom Israel can negotiate seems not to trouble Obama one bit, for he is intent on shoveling money and support to the failed-state-in-waiting.
--Obama's decision to bypass Israel on this trip to the Middle east is a deliberate and "dismal" signal to Israel's enemies that it is now open season on Israel.
It is worth noting that Glick's colleague Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy doesn't believe that Americans will ultimately support this dastardly policy:
It is hard to believe the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.
Gaffney hopes that as Obama's policies and their implications become more widely known "he will find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay." This is a faint hope indeed, since Obama appears to have support for his policies from the vast majority of liberal Jews and Jewish congressmen.In the meantime, if as predicted Obama's Cairo speech is the opening salvo in a campaign to marginalize Israel, then tomorrow, June 4th, 2009, will truly be a day of infamy.
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