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Charles Krauthammer can tell the Mid-East truth again.
While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.
It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — 10 months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.
To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the 10th, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.
Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”
Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider: …
The more things change . . . Michael Ledeen has interesting post comparing Carter and Obama foreign policies.
… One of the best short summaries of the dangerous foolishness of our current foreign policy goes like this:
‘ Inconsistencies are a familiar part of politics in most societies. Usually, however, governments behave hypocritically when their principles conflict with the national interest. What makes the inconsistencies of the Obama administration noteworthy are, first, the administration’s moralism, which renders it especially vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy; and, second, the administration’s predilection for policies that violate the strategic and economic interests of the United States. The administration’s conception of national interest borders on doublethink: it finds friendly powers to be guilty representatives of the status quo and views the triumph of unfriendly groups as beneficial to America’s “true interests.” ‘
I made one change in the original text. I inserted “Obama” in place of “Carter.” The paragraph comes from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s essay, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” which appeared in Commentary magazine in November, 1979. …
Nile Gardiner thinks it is foolish for our debtor nation to lecture Europe.
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
“I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.”
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. …
Toby Harnden catches David Axelrod telling the truth.
Talking at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in New Hampshire (a quaint little event where attendees are given a wooden egg and clamour to have it signed by the speaker), David Axelrod, chief strategist for the Obama campaign, used the word “titanic” when talking about the task facing his boss next year:
“This is going to be a titanic struggle.But I firmly believe we are on the right side of the struggle. In 2008, we had the wind at our backs. Now, we don’t have the wind at our back. We have the wind in our faces, because the American people have the wind in their faces.”
Of course, Axelrod, a kindly, lugubrious figure who is often compared to a walrus, meant “titanic” in terms of the dictionary definition of “huge or colossal”, deriving from Titan, rather than the R.M.S. Titanic, which sank in the Atlantic en route from Southampton to New York in April 1912. But for a political consultant to use the t-word about his own candidate was, to put it mildly, not an example of the best political spin. …
Alana Goodman notes the president’s fundraising has hit some headwinds.
This might explain those passive-aggressive donor solicitation emails. The White House Dossier’s Keith Koffler catches some news buried in the New York Times write-up on Obama’s town hall yesterday. According to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, the president is on track to pull in $55 million when the filing deadline ends Friday – which is $30 million less than he raised in the previous quarter: …
Michael Barone says Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, has had enough.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, is a very smart guy. He got JPMorganChase moving out of mortgage-backed securities while the other big banks were moving further into them. He got Bears Stearns, and its $1 billion headquarters building at Madison and 46th, from Ben Bernanke for a song. His acquisition of WaMu turned out much better than Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide. He made it clear his bank didn’t want or need Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s $25 billion capital tranche and paid it back as soon as he could. I’ve observed him other the years and interviewed him and have been hugely impressed.
Dimon describes himself as a moderate Democrat. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, was mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary and has had meetings at the Obama White House. Now comes the news from the New York Post that Dimon has just attended a Mitt Romney fundraiser.
Streetwise Professor posts on “soft.”
We should all feel so ashamed. We are letting down Obama. We’re not pulling our weight. He thinks we’re “great”, but we’ve gotten “soft” and lost our “competitive edge.” He gives himself high grades, except for his failure to communicate just how wonderful he and his administration have been for the country, but he has an explanation for that: he’s been so darned focused on his Herculean labors that he’s forgotten to let us know just how heroic they are. As for the rest of us, we need to pick our game, toughen up, stop whining, and get with it. We need to live up to his lofty standards, and his lofty expectations for us. …
Hearing remark’s saying America has gone soft, Jonah Goldberg wonders if “soft” is a translation of the French work “malaise.”
… Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?
Jersey boy moves to the South and says to folks back home. “Y’all come down.” National Review has the story.
I’m a Jersey boy. I was born there, went to high school and college there, and assumed I’d spend the rest of my life there. But though I loved the people and food, the Jersey Shore summers, and short rides through the Lincoln Tunnel to Broadway shows and Madison Square Garden, I gave it all up and moved south. Very far south. I’m not alone.
According to the latest Census figures, and stories in USA Today, the Associated Press, and elsewhere, the South was the fastest growing region in America over the last decade, up 14 percent. “The center of population has moved south in the most extreme way we’ve even seen in history,” Robert Groves, director of the Census Bureau, said a few months ago.
That migration wasn’t limited to white Yankees like me. The nation’s African American population grew 1.7 million over the last decade — and 75 percent of that growth occurred in the South, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. What those stories and studies failed to report were the reasons propelling that migration. The economic and cultural forces driving this migration south have been ignored by the press. And by the Obama administration
So I figured this Jersey boy who now calls Oxford, Mississippi, home could explain why. This Yankee turned good ol’ boy could explain the pull — no, the tug — of the South. …