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Jonathan Tobin outlines the Obama administration’s strategy for achieving peace in the Middle East, and why it won’t work.
…Many American Jews and other partisan Democrats have adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the president’s signals, which indicate that he views the Jewish state as an obstacle to his ambition of improving relations with the Arab and Islamic world. Indeed, as the Post explains, Obama hoped that making public his disagreements with Israel would buy him credibility with Arab governments.
While not enthralled with the Israelis’ electing a right-of-center government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu a few months after Americans chose Mr. Obama, the Post observes something Jewish Democrats have been in denial about: Obama’s one-sided pressure has only increased the appetite of Palestinian and Arab leaders for more Israeli concessions and made them less likely to reciprocate. This is a familiar pattern. So long as the Arabs can rely on Americans to pressure Israel, they feel no need to make concessions themselves or take any proactive steps (such as halting terrorism and stopping anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement in their official media) to advance the cause of peace.
As Mahmoud Abbas, the supposedly moderate head of the Palestinian Authority, recently told the Washington Post, he has no intention of dealing with Israel. Instead, he will sit back and wait for Obama to keep applying the screws to America’s only democratic ally in the region. …
Jennifer Rubin posts that Mary Robinson of Durban I infamy will be given the Medal of Freedom by Obama.
Mary Robinson, U.N. Commissioner and former president of Ireland, is being awarded the Medal of Freedom by Obama. Well, isn’t that just dandy. Who is Mary Robinson? You may remember her role in presiding over the infamous Durban I Conference. At the time she joined Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University (no, you can’t make this up), this report summarized the objections to her hiring, given her record in overseeing the infamous Israel-bashing event:
Columbia has “become a hotbed of anti-Israel haters,” said the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein. “It’s especially astonishing that a school with such a large Jewish population would insult Jewish people by hiring these haters of the Jewish state of Israel.”
The groups also blame Ms. Robinson for allowing the Durban conference to become a global platform for anti-Israel venting. Ms. Robinson, as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, rejected many American demands to remove anti-Israel language from final conference documents.
“Under Mary Robinson’s leadership the Human Rights Commission was one-sided and extremist. In her tenure at the HRC, she lacked fairness in her approach to the Israeli/Palestinian issue,” said the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, James Tisch. …
… There are no words to describe how atrocious a selection this is. But it does speak volumes about the president’s sympathies. And now, will the same voices that condemned her appointment to Columbia step forward? …
Conspiracy theories take focus away from the very serious attacks that are occurring against capitalism and freedom, says David Harsanyi.
…Those who peddle the Obama birth certificate conspiracy are squandering their chance at making any substantive case against an administration that is waging a completely non-secretive battle against capitalism.
If you want to watch it yourself, just take the time to find the video floating around on YouTube of a Delaware congressman named Mike Castle.
In a town hall meeting, Castle is accosted by mob of ginned-up Republicans, clapping and hollering about Obama’s non-citizenship and, finally, forcing the cowering congressman to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to display his loyalty.
If conservatives believe this kind of indulgence of lunacy is helpful, they are mistaken. …
David Warren discusses other societal ills.
…The SPPI is itself a privately-financed think tank, so will be demonized on that ground, among persons who were never taught in school that guilt-by-association is a logical fallacy. Indeed, even Ian Plimer, perhaps the most independent-minded Australian earth scientist ever to be born, has been taking malicious hits of this sort, from the climate-change lobbyists he has exposed.
Plimer is the prominent geologist whose recent book, Heaven and Earth, subtitled, “Global Warming: The Missing Science”, does the best job I’ve seen of showing that the premise behind all the government-commissioned studies is knowingly false. For it can be demonstrated that, above 50 parts per million, carbon dioxide accumulations do not heat the atmosphere at all. But even without knowing that, we should have been alarmed, by the existence of a monopsony.
Mona Charen reviews a new book with fresh insights on Israel, George Gilder’s The Israel Test.
…Jewish accomplishment is an undeniable fact of history. Many (Murray included) have speculated about the disproportionate number of Jewish intellectuals, musicians, millionaires, scientists and others. Gilder (a Gentile) is interested less in the why of Jewish excellence than in its consequences. A society that is organized to permit individuals to flourish and to realize their potential (like the United States and post-1980s Israel) will broadly share in the increased prosperity those individuals help to create. A society (or a global system) that misunderstands wealth creation and wishes to level society by penalizing success will make life poorer for everyone. …
…Israel has only recently become a technological and economic powerhouse. It got there after a protracted dalliance with socialism that gave Israel high unemployment, anemic growth, and inflation rates that reached 1,000 percent in early 1985. Three catalysts changed everything: 1) the influx of 1 million vehemently anti-socialist immigrants from the former Soviet Union; 2) the addition of a far smaller but still consequential cohort of American Jewish immigrants who had business experience and expertise; and 3) economic reforms urged by Natan Sharansky and Bibi Netanyahu. The results, Gilder writes, were “incandescent.” He cites a 2008 Deloitte & Touche survey showing that in six key areas — telecom, microchips, software, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and clean energy — “Israel ranked second only to the United States in technological innovation.” Israel’s high-tech research and development puts it at the center of the information revolution. Intel’s microchips, Gilder notes, might as well be tagged “Israel Inside.”
But what has this to do with the Palestinians? In addition to his guided tour through Israel’s equivalent of Silicon Valley, Gilder also provides a taut and clarifying economic and political history of the modern Middle East. The economic piece is key, because Israelis have created prosperity wherever they have touched ground in that otherwise listless part of the globe. And Arabs have responded by flooding into areas they previously disdained after Israelis made them habitable, even desirable. It was so in the Yishuv (the new Jewish settlements in the Holy Land starting in the 1880s). And after Israel reluctantly took control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the economy in the territories became one of the most dynamic on earth, posting 30 percent annual growth. The Arab population, along with per capita income, tripled.
Arabs are and have always been in a position to share in the wealth created by Israel — and to create their own. But they have flunked the “Israel Test” by choosing envy and hatred. It’s a test the outcome of which, Gilder persuasively argues, will determine our own future as well. Gilder has always been right. Read the book.
Mark Steyn thinks we are mistaken making just utilitarian arguments against ObamaCare.
… That’s not why it’s tanking in the polls, of course. It’s floundering because Obama sold it initially on the basis of “controlling costs,” and then the Congressional Budget Office let the cat out of the bag and pointed out that, au contraire, it would cost $1.6 trillion, and therefore either add to an unsustainable deficit, or require massive tax increases, or (more likely) both.
All of which is true. But to object to the governmentalization of health care on that basis implicitly concedes the argument that, if we could figure out a way to bring the price down, it would be fine and dandy. Right now, there are a lot of wonkish and utilitarian objections to what the Democrats want to do, and they’re gaining traction. In The American Spectator, Brandon Crocker points out that this is exactly the way things went over Hillarycare in 1993: Americans took against the plan on practical grounds but not against the underlying principle. “Since we did not win that philosophical argument in 1993,” Mr. Crocker writes, “we now have to fight the same battle today.” And, if we win on utilitarian grounds today, we’ll have to fight it again in 10 years, five years, maybe less – until something passes, and then everything changes, forever: As the IRA famously taunted Margaret Thatcher, we only have to get lucky once; you have to be lucky every day. …
… How did the health-care debate decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own bodies?
That’s the argument that needs to be won. And, if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment,” governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed – by the Conservative Party, alas – that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know … totalitarian?
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks – drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.
When it comes to selling Obamacare, hope apparently does not suffice, writes Karl Rove.
On the campaign trail last year, Barack Obama promised to end the “politics of fear and cynicism.” Yet he is now trying to sell his health-care proposals on fear.
At his news conference last week, he said “Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage, or lose their job. . . . If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction.”
A Fox News Poll from last week shows that 84% of Americans who have health insurance are happy with their coverage. And because 91% of all Americans have insurance, that means that 76% of all Americans will be concerned about anything that threatens their current coverage. By a 2-1 margin, according to the Fox Poll, Americans want coverage from a private provider rather than the government.
Facing numbers like these, Mr. Obama is dropping his high-minded rhetoric and instead trying to scare voters.
Charles Krauthammer foresees that Obama will settle for health insurance reform that will still result in new requirements, entitlements, and reliance on the state.
…To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no preexisting condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
Nirvana. But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.
Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the United States; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.
Jennifer Rubin posts on the outcome of the beer summit. Apparently the White House is still deciding how to spin the ”teachable moment.”
…Later the president professed amazement that everyone could be so interested in a meeting about what he had previously described as an incident brought on by a ”stupidly” behaving cop, which he then converted into a “teachable moment.” He lectured the media and public:
“It’s an attempt to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved, including myself, all of whom are imperfect.”
Said the president, “hopefully instead of ginning up anger and hyperbole, you know, everybody can just spend a little bit of time with some self-reflection and recognizing that everybody has different points of view.”
I think it was he who suggested it was symbolic. But once again — like American Jewish leaders — we’re told to go self-reflect.
What a perfectly disingenuous and arrogant performance. Far from healing racial tensions, Obama inflamed them and then fled the scene of his own making. The weekend comes just in a nick of time — the president certainly needs to get out of the spotlight and regroup.