Unity Coalition for Israel

Obama@70/30?

Recovery summer, opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, negative campaigning, and intervention in the Ground Zero mosque dispute—call them Obama’s Four Disasters. As policy, they’re questionable. As political exercises, they’re losers. As clues about Obama, they’re evidence he’s lost his political knack.

What was Obama thinking? These weren’t initiatives taken suddenly. They were carefully thought out and plotted, no doubt in expectation the president would gain politically and so would Democratic candidates. Whatever calculations the White House made, they were faulty....

Ground Zero imam hails Iran's Islamic revolution

Iranians wave flags as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks during the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran on February 11, 2010. Ahmadinejad said that Iran has succeeded to produce its first batch of Uranium enriched to 20 percent. UPI/Maryam Rahmanian

JERUSALEM – The controversial imam behind a plan to build a Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero recommended that President Obama support the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf also argued against the U.S. aiding the pro-democracy protesters who were being violently suppressed by the Iranian regime.

The information comes after it was reported Rauf's Cordoba Initiative website scrubbed a photograph of the imam posing with the chief of an Iranian "human rights" council that has been accused of multiple human rights violations as well as imposing Shariah law....

A Palestinian Victory

...Last week, Lebanon's parliament amended a clause in a 1946 law that had been used to bar the 400,000 Palestinians living in the country from taking any but the most menial jobs. "I was born in Lebanon and I have never known Palestine," the AP quoted one 45-year-old Palestinian who works as a cab driver. "We want to live like Lebanese. We are human beings and we need civil rights."

The dirty little secret of the Arab world is that it has consistently treated Palestinians living in its midst with contempt and often violence. In 1970, Jordan expelled thousands of Palestinian militants after Yasser Arafat attempted a coup against King Hussein. In 1991, Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians working in the country as punishment for Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War.

For six decades, Palestinians have been forced by Arab governments to live in often squalid conditions so that they could serve as propaganda tools against Israel, even as millions of refugees elsewhere have been repatriated and absorbed by their host countries. This month's vote still falls short of giving Palestinian Lebanese the rights they deserve, including citizenship. But it's a reminder of the cynicism of so much Arab pro-Palestinian propaganda, and the credulity of those who fall for it.

Israel to blame if talks fail over settlements issue: Abbas

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on television on Sunday Israel would be to blame if resumed direct talks with Israel failed over the Jewish settlements issue.

"I have to say, and we told all parties including the United States before accepting renewed talks, that the Israeli government will bear sole responsibility of the risk of failure of the talks if settlement activities continue in Palestinian territories occupied in 1967," he said in a speech....

Why Does Obama Keep Apologizing?

President Obama's defense of the right of Muslims to build a mosque and Islamic center in New York City turned the issue into one of religious freedom.� That was wrong.

Obama's first priority—like that of every national leader—is to speak for his country and on their behalf.� Obama's refusal to do so, his insinuation that questions raised about a proposed Islamic mega-center near the site of the 9/11 attacks are un-American, unconstitutional, and prejudiced have shamed every American, and the good name of America.

Obama could have defended America; instead, he apologized for it.

He could have said that 4,400 Americans have died in Iraq, 1,200 have died in Afghanistan, and over a hundred thousand Americans have been wounded to help those Muslim countries attain freedom (and, of course, hundreds of billions of dollars towards that effort).

But he didn't.

Obama might have said that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S.; hundreds of thousands of Muslims have found a home in America since and despite 9/11.� He could have said America has and continues to stand for freedom and democracy.

But he didn’t.

He is probably the first American president to malign his own country while in office....

Preserving Israel at the Eleventh Hour

Faced with the daunting prospect of seemingly endless terrorism, and with staggering global opposition to any of its essential and altogether permissible forms of self-defense, Israel now requires a complex and capable counter-terrorism strategy merely to survive. Simultaneously, the major threats to Israel’s physical survival lie in certain mass-destruction ( biological and/or nuclear) attacks by enemy states.� Ultimately, therefore, the Jewish State’s actual continuance rests upon even more than successful counter-terrorism. It rests also upon the inherently fragile and unpredictable foundations of nuclear deterrence.

Israel is tiny. For this beleaguered ministate, U.S. President Barack Obama’s preferred “world free of nuclear weapons”� would represent a harsh habitat of utterly radical insecurity. Here, amid a literally dreadful anarchy, Israel’s enemies could now gratefully inflict mortal harms upon the “Zionist Cancer” without plausible fear of unacceptable reprisals. If, moreover, this particular preferred world were also to embrace Mr. Obama’s “Road Map” to an independent Palestinian state, the resultant synergies and (using a productive military concept) force multipliers could further magnify the existential threats to Israel.

Significantly, this does not mean that a still-nuclear Israel would necessary be safe and secure. Nuclear deterrence, after all, depends in part upon enemy rationality. Where this requirement is not met, the nuclear retaliatory threat is immobilized.

Neither Israel nor the United States has been willing to act preemptively against Iran. Why? The answer is that they have chosen instead to rely upon hope....