ALERT

In Memorium

Roni Yihye

Hundreds of people on Thursday attended the funeral of Roni Yihye, the student who was killed in a Qassam rocket attack on Sapir College in Sderot the previous day.(photo by Alberto Denkberg)

Obama Controversy

Below, you will read varying perspectives. Unlike many blogs that share our core concerns, AlertToday does not express an opinion on every related topic. Our readers are busy people; we bring them a service by culling from newspaper features and the posts of other blogs what we think most essential to convey. When it comes to the core issues of Israel’s security and the imperative to alert America about the Islamist threat, we are a persuasive publication; when it comes to inferences to be drawn from related issues, we aim to inform in order to assist our readers in forming their own opinions.

Obama Advisors

“Senator Obama has made a career - and a campaign - out of not much more than a brilliant ability to tell people what they want to hear. As a result, his roster of self-proclaimed advisors tend to be incompatible with one another. For those like me and perhaps you, on the question of the survival of Israel and of Jewry, for example, his fans and advisors range from Martin Peretz on the philosemitic side to the Reverend Mr. Josiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Susan Powers and Brzezinksi on the anti-semitic side. Fans on both sides of the question - those who want the Jews to live and those who do not care - are assured and willing to assure others that the real Obama speaks to them, and not to the others.” Read more

“Over the past month, controversy has erupted over the issue of Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisers and the impact that they might have on a future President Obama’s policies toward Israel, and on American foreign policy in the broader region. Articles in the Washington Post, Newsweek, American Thinker, New York Sun, Politico, Commentary Magazine, The New Republic, CAMERA and other publications have precipitated this controversy.” Read more.

Obama on Likud

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.” Read more.

Obama & Jewish Liberals

“Obama, talking about Farrakhan - and about anti-Semitism among African-Americans, which he also denounced in his speech on Martin Luther King Day - touched a sensitive nerve when he was talking about one possibility that’s inherent to his candidacy: he has the chance to restore the alliance between blacks and Jews.

“This will not necessarily get Obama the votes of every Jewish liberal in this country. But it is also one promise that no American liberal Jew can simply ignore.” Read more.

Obama & Arab Militiants

The following link was forwarded to us by a friend of ALERT in Colorado. We found a few other sites carrying this story but it does not seem to have appeared in any mainstream media, not even the conservative publications.

“JERUSALEM - The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe” and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.” You will certainly want to read more.

A Touch of Whimsey

We don’t if today has been like this for you, but here’s a whimsical impression of this odd extra day we get every four years: Nobody makes plans for Feb. 29, because nobody remembers when there is a Feb. 29. And so the day arrives like a snow day, an empty calendar slot with no obligations and no expectations. Just a pause.

From time to time we bring you commentary that takes the pulse of the zeitgeist because it always affects the core concerns of our blog. This season the zeitgeist is undergoing significant change. Generational, gender, and cultural issues are all being played out against a turbulent nominating process.

Reversing Gender Roles

Maureen Dowd, always sensitive to the vagaries of the zeitgeist, notes the irony that while Hillary has been struggling to be recognized for the kind of toughness defined as male, Obama is succeeding with his advocacy of a more feminine management style. Read more

Passing Generational Torch

Last month, when Senator Clinton seemed to have more of a chance than she does now, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter (pictured here) wrote discerningly about how a place called tomorrow is where this campaign will be won, and who is Bill Clinton’s most legitimate political heir.

“In 1992, the Clinton campaign came up with a theme song that evoked the message they hoped would turn a 46-year-old obscure Arkansas governor into the president of the United States: Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Fleetwood Mac. Now it’s Barack Obama, also age 46, who has the claim on tomorrow, which is where presidential campaigns have almost always been won in this country. Hillary Clinton still has a chance to recover, but she’s bucking this history. Although it would crimp his own foundation work, Bill Clinton desperately wants his wife to be president. But he knows “in his bones,” as he likes to say in other contexts, that Obama may be his truest heir.” Read more

Sex, Politics, Privacy

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen contrasts cultural trends in France, where there is much uncharacteristic disapproval of the president’s private life, to the U.S. where, “A baby-boom generation, now pre-geriatric, has adjusted the national moral prism: the boomers mostly grew up with experimentation on the sexual and drug fronts rampant around them.

“These boomers seem uninterested in the fact Barack Obama said he smoked marijuana and tried cocaine as a youth. An exhaustive front-page piece on this in my own newspaper reached the shattering conclusion that he might actually have used fewer drugs than he claimed. Perhaps diehard hippies will be disappointed and decide not to vote for him! Otherwise, outside Haight-Ashbury, nobody seemed to care.

“As for John McCain’s supposed extra-marital romantic relationship a decade ago with an attractive lobbyist more than 30 years his junior, who cares? This unproven teaser on another long New York Times piece that was really about McCain’s susceptibility to lobbying from the rich and powerful he claims to have taken on, has been widely criticized as an unfair, unfounded or uninteresting distraction from the serious essence of the story.

“In other words, Americans care about conflict of interest; they care less about infidelity itself, especially at the level of innuendo or rumor.” Read more

Sarkozy’s Holocaust Issue

In a recent post, we quoted a New York Times article titled By Making Holocaust Personal to Pupils, Sarkozy Stirs Anger. In today’s New York Sun, an article titled Sarkozy’s Brave Move has this to say on the subject:

“President Sarkozy’s honeymoon with the French people may have finally come to an end over, of all things, the Holocaust…

“…Mr. Sarkozy adopted an American way of thinking when it came to market reforms, terrorist alerts, work ethics, and even jogging in public. A national mourning over the Holocaust surely could not be far behind…

“There is moral appeal to Mr. Sarkozy carrying the Holocaust torch across the Atlantic and igniting it in his own country. France has never quite properly internalized this European tragedy as its own. Nor has it sufficiently reflected on its complicity in the crime…

“The French may disapprove of Mr. Sarkozy’s public displays of affection for his new wife, but his public gesture with respect to the Holocaust should be a source of national pride, not shame. If nothing else, it will remind the citizens of France that their remembrance of the Holocaust has been inadequate and long overdue, but, in the hands of French school children, perhaps it will not be too late.”

Read in its entirety this fascinating study of French attitudes toward a presidential reminder of past complicity.

Obama: Enigmatic or Strategic

“The closing weeks of a primary campaign aren’t especially conducive to thoughtful discussions of political philosophy. But if not now, when? Mr. Obama’s rhetoric about bridging partisan differences has been inspiring, his personal story is moving and his qualities of leadership are undoubted. But do voters understand where, exactly, he would like to lead them?”

The above conclusion to a recent Washington Post editorial is in keeping with the widespread contention that Obama is lite on the issues, that he is an enigma behind which a fine mind and pleasing personality is lined with fluff. But the New York Sun has a different perspective:

“Mr. Obama has learned that moving an electorate requires something more than showing that you are knowledgeable. Most people vote with their gut. Most Americans do not subscribe to Foreign Affairs and are not political blog addicts. To get elected, you have to make voters like you. Superficial appeal is key.”

Conservative columnist John McWhorter goes on to argue that “To dismiss Mr. Obama as all heat and no light is lazy and forced, just like Maureen Dowd’s clumsy Obambi epithet. Ideally, candidates for president would be assessed solely on their command of the issues. But when has that ever been the case? Or, why would we expect Mr. Obama to pretend that it ever has — and let Hillary Clinton beat him?”

Read in its entirety this portrait of a strategically-savvy candidate who is playing his cards of charisma and compelling narrative, quite possibly all the way to the White House.

A conservative columnist praising the political acumen of a liberal candidate who cloaks a strategy-driven campaign beneath an engrossing personal narrative, while a liberal newspaper stands dissatisfied with the Obama campaign to date. What is happening here? Change, folks, and it’s all a bit topsy turvy, but would be great fun, except for the gnawing knowledge that with everything up for grabs in a post-neo-con America, we have to wonder how much “change” is going to be called for in U.S.-Israel relations.

A friend of ALERT in Asheville, NC sent us the following information from Senator Obama’s Web site and would like to know whether this convinces those among our readers who are skeptical about the probable Democrat nominee.

• Ensure a Strong U.S.-Israel Partnership: Barack Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel , America ’s strongest ally in the Middle East . Obama supports this closeness, stating that that the United States would never distance itself from Israel .
• Support Israel’s Right to Self Defense: During the July 2006 Lebanon war, Barack Obama stood up strongly for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hezbollah raids and rocket attacks, cosponsoring a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria’s involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles. He believes strongly in Israel ’s right to protect its citizens.
• Support Foreign Assistance to Israel : Barack Obama has consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel . He defends and supports the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and has advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met. He has called for continuing U.S. cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defense systems.

Anti-Zionism Equates with Racism

“It has been a staple of public discourse for decades, that those who criticize Israel specifically because they love the country and believe in the more lofty and challenging and just of its ideals, are routinely pilloried for it, berated by rightists as self-haters and anti-Semites and destroyers of Zionism,” says Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston.

“Now meet a refreshing new phenomenon - bashing and negation of those same critics of Israel, but this time, the attacks are coming from Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims, and their allies on the European ultra-left.

“The message is: We don’t care what you think, we don’t care what causes you care about and advance, we don’t even care if you think just like we do - You’re Israelis, and that’s good enough for us - in fact, bad enough for us - reason enough, in short, to boycott you.” Read more.

Sderot: Present Reality; Perplexing Metaphor

“Bit by bit, Sderot is going crazy…the next Middle East war may start over Sderot. To many Israelis, the daily rain of Qassam rockets is reason enough to go back into Gaza and eradicate the rocket-makers, the rocket launchers and the entire Hamas leadership that now runs Gaza. The call for action superficially makes a certain amount of sense. But memory rebukes: Didn’t Israel just pull out of Gaza?”

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post concludes his analysis of Israeli options about the town under a perpetual siege: “Sderot is a town, real enough and in pain. But it is also a metaphor. Its residents are trapped. So is Israel. Sooner or later, if nothing is done, a rocket will hit kids on the playground or mothers strolling the street, and Israel will have to respond — another nasty, little war. That much is clear. This too: Absolutely nothing else is.” Read in its entirety a perspective of Sderot as both reality and metaphor.

Iran’s Dual Timetables

“… Iran is running on two timetables,” says maverick intellectual Christopher Hitchens. “The first one — the gradual but definite emergence of a democratization trend among the young and the middle class — is something that we can gauge but not determine. The second one — the process by which a messianic regime lays hold of the means to manufacture apocalyptic weaponry — could move rather faster, and is partly designed in any case to insulate the mullahs from regime change.”…Iran is running on two timetables. The first one — the gradual but definite emergence of a democratization trend among the young and the middle class — is something that we can gauge but not determine. The second one — the process by which a messianic regime lays hold of the means to manufacture apocalyptic weaponry — could move rather faster, and is partly designed in any case to insulate the mullahs from regime change.” Read more.

McCain & Israel

“Israeli experts on American politics said in recent weeks that a campaign between Obama and McCain will place Israel at center stage …One reason why McCain can draw Jewish votes is that he is free of the burden of George Bush, who in spite his support for Israel, cannot easily attract Jewish voters because he is a conservative evangelical. McCain, on the other hand, has adopted moderate policies domestically, and will allow Jewish voters to choose him with greater ease.” Read more

McCain: Terrorism = Transcendent Challenge

“…one of John McCain’s favorite lines — his declaration that the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists, or, as he sometimes says, extremism– could define the 2008 election.” Read more.

Obama Prism

“The prism through which I’d like to view Obama’s appeal is Bill Cosby…Cosby’s TV show about the Huxtable family, from 1984 to 1992, wasn’t just a sitcom. His post-racial middle-class Huxtables were an explicit attempt by him to stanch the downward pitch of black street culture. He lost.” Read more.

Obama Advisors

“When it comes to foreign affairs, Senator Obama’s inner circle of advisers includes a Swahili-speaking Air Force general he met on a trip to Africa; a 30-year-old speechwriter who helped draft the final report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and President Clinton’s first national security adviser, who in 2005 converted to Judaism under the tutelage of the Navy’s chief Jewish chaplain.” Read more.

Obama Surprises

“Senator Obama recently gave us a disturbing foretaste of the contradictory doublespeak we could expect under an Obama presidency.” Read more.

Professor Doesn’t Know

“Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it’s one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam.

“Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, occupation on the part of neo-colonial powers. This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.

“When an attendee asked him why no other impoverished or oppressed group around the world resorts to suicide bombings, Esposito stonewalled for several minutes before giving one of the few straight answers of the night: I don’t know.” Read More of this revealing report by Cinammon Stillwell.

Hamas Rabbit

“Following the demise of the Hamas Mickey Mouse character Farfur at the hands of a belligerent Israeli soldier, Hamas’ television station has introduced a Bugs Bunny lookalike who declares I will eat Jews, a British newspaper reported Wednesday.

“According to the Daily Mail, Hamas-controlled TV in Gaza has introduced Assud, a rabbit, claiming that he sneaked into Gaza from Egypt after the border was breached last month.”

Read more about the Jew-devouring Assud. We’ve come a long way from “What’s up, doc?”

German Professors

“In debate held at Netanya Academic College, professors state modern day Germany has paid its debt in full to the Jewish people.

“These are words that have been brewing just below the surface in Germany for quite a while, and now they were uttered aloud, right here in Israel. In a conference held Monday at Netanya’s Academic College, German professors asserted that their country should stop giving the Sate of Israel preferential treatment.

This statement comes at the heels of a manifesto, recently published by 25 German scholars, which maintained that Germany must be more balanced in its political relations with Israel and its Arab neighbors.” Read more

How Public Schools Portray Islam

“Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history - often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors.” Read more about the textbook controversy in California centered around CSU Sacremento Professor Ayad Al-Qazzaz.

Sarkozy & Holocaust Studies

“PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.” Read more about how the French president has sparked an intense debate with his plan to personalize for French pupils the short lives French children killed by the Nazis.

Rewarding Islamist Bad Behavior

“The U.S. Department of State has awarded a grant worth $494,368 to University of Delaware political scientist, Brookings Institution fellow, and Pentagon consultant Muqtedar Khan, who last fall objected to serving on a panel with a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to a UD press release, the grant is to be used, “to initiate a dialogue on religion and politics between key members of religious and community organizations in the Middle East and the United States.” Read more

What Is Not Happening on the Campaign Trail

Monica Crowley, Political Mavens

“The terrorist who was bin Laden BEFORE bin Laden - Hezbollah Chief Imad Mugniyah - was killed yesterday. He was the villain responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of American Marines in Lebanon and countless others in U.S. embassy bombings, car bombings, and suicide bombings in the 1980s. His elimination is a major victory in the war on terror. The president can’t say much because of Israeli sensitivities, but the candidates can. Where are they?” Read More instances of what the campaigns are ignoring.

NY Sun on Bloomberg:

“Setting the stage for a fight with the two leading Democratic presidential candidates and the frontrunning Republican, Mayor Bloomberg is railing against the recently passed federal economic stimulus package, saying that handing out checks to stimulate the economy is like giving a drink to an alcoholic. Read More about the New York mayor’s knowledgeable hard-hitting remarks on the economy so different from the measured sound bites of the candidates.

Peggy Noonan in the WSJ tell us what she would like to hear now from Hillary Clinton:

“Look, let’s be frank. A lot of politics is spin, for reasons we can all write books about. I’m as guilty as anyone else. But right now I’m in the fight of my life, and right now I’m not winning. I’m up against an opponent who’s classy and accomplished and who has captured the public imagination. I’ve had some trouble doing that. I’m not one of those people you think of when you hear a phrase like ‘the romance of history.’ But I think I bring some things to the table that I haven’t quite managed to explain. I think I’ve got a case to be made that I haven’t quite succeeded in making. And I’m going to ask you for one more try. Will you listen? And if I convince you, will you help me? Because I need your help.

“Could Mrs. Clinton do something like this? I doubt it. She’d think it concedes too much and would look weak. But maybe it would show an emotional suppleness, and a characterological ability to see things as they are, which is always nice in a president.” Read More

What Is Happening on the Campaign Trail

James Taranto in the WSJ comments on reports of women swooning at Obama rallies:”What exactly are we to make of this? A cynic might wonder if the whole thing isn’t staged, given how often it happens and how well-honed and self-serving Obama’s standard response seems to be.

“But if it’s spontaneous, that’s in a way even more unsettling. At the New Hampshire rally, Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame quipped, ‘Sinatra had the same effect on people.’ Sinatra made girls swoon by singing romantic songs. But America isn’t electing a crooner in chief.

“Obama has a talent for eliciting intense emotion–an ability that can be dangerous in a politician. What more does he have to offer? That’s a hard question to answer, and it makes the prospect of an Obama presidency quite worrisome.” Read More

Krauthammer: Washington Post

“…a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

“This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a salvational fervor and idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by euphoria.” Read more.

David Gerson Washington Post

“Hillary Clinton’s attempt to define a narrative of her own has been hobbled because her campaign is defined by the rejection of rhetoric. Obama’s eloquence and idealism are dismissed as abstract and a fairy tale in contrast to Clinton’s experience and policy substance. It is difficult for a campaign to inspire while using inspiration as an epithet.” Read More.

Benchmark Victory in Counter Terroism

“The killing of Imad Mughniye in Damascus, what ever is the context and whom ever are the executors, is a benchmark in the war between the Iranian Terror networks and their enemies. Mughniye has led the Iranian and Hezbollah operations against US personnel since 1983 and was the top planner in the Hezbollah-Israel war. He was seen as the principal link between the Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) power and its supported organizations around the world including Hezbollah in Lebanon and overseas. But as important, was his role in coordinating the Iranian Terror activities with Syria’s intelligence services.” Read in its entirety this analysis on the Political Mavens blog by Walid Phares on the significance of the assassination of Imad Mughniye.”

Danes Defend Cartoonist

“Sammenhold is the Danish word for solidarity. It has taken two years and a murder plot but the Danish mainstream media finally got it. Today 11 Danish papers reprinted the famous Mohammed cartoons as an act of defiant solidarity with the 73 year old Jyllands-Posten (JP) cartoonist. When the Islamist world exploded in organized rage against a series of Danish cartoons published months earlier, the many members of the Danish media failed to do what it is doing today. With relatively few exception, neither did the rest of the free media.” Read in its entirety how Denmark is finally getting it and standing up to Islamism instead of taking the apology route to appeasement pictured above.

Dutch Gird for Geert’s Film Fitna

“Dutch far-right deputy Geert Wilder said in an interview published Saturday that his controversial anti-Islam film will be called Fitna, arabic for ordeal, and will be aired in March.The leader of the Freedom party (PVV), which has nine of 150 seats in parliament, said in November that he planned to make a short film showing that Islam’s holy book, the Koran, is a fascist book that incites people to murder. Read more about this 15-minute film certain to spark Islamic rage. Wilder (pictured above) seems ready for whatever is coming. Can the same be said for his country?

Defiance Comes for the Archbishop

“Certainly it is true that, since last Thursday, when Rowan Williams - the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Church of England, symbolic leader of the international Anglican Church - called for constructive accommodation with some aspects of Shariah law, and declared the incorporation of Muslim religion law into the British legal system unavoidable, practically no insult has been left unsaid…every syllable of the harshest tabloid criticism is more than well deserved. The archbishop’s language is mild-mannered, legalistic, jargon-riddled; the sentiments behind them are profoundly dangerous.” Read more in the New York Sun about the revulsion inspired by this glaring example of clerical capitulation.

Talking with the Enemy

Below are excerpts from a savvy critique in the Wall Street Journal by Michael O’Hanlon (pictured here) on Barack Obama’s stated intention to hold talks with enemies of the U.S. should the senator be elected president.

“Mr. Obama is not wrong about the utility of negotiations with unsavory regimes. They are often useful, and they need not amount to appeasement or even a false raising of hopes. If handled carefully, they can be done in a manner that minimizes the prestige accorded a foreign leader we do not wish to risk strengthening. But such high-level contact is not a new tool of American foreign policy, nor does it guarantee success.

“If elevated to a doctrine, reliance on presidential-level diplomacy is a mistake. It risks rewarding foreign leaders who cause the most trouble, creating perverse incentives for those desiring the attention of the U.S. It also can confuse us about the nature of diplomacy. Foreign leaders, nice or not, make deals based on assessments of their interests, and any new diplomatic doctrine that fails to recognize as much would ignore centuries of history and potentially damage American security.”