Category Archives: Israel

Free Speech According to the Left

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On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University.

Dr Halbertal had been invited by the university to give the lecture, and after the disruption, he was able to proceed.

The gang of protestors bragged about it.

Today, this apologist for Zionist war crimes spoke only sporadically, as his lies were interrupted again and again by protesters who refused to listen to his anti-Palestinian hate speech.

And not only that. This gang did their best to deny everyone else their right to listen to the speech. The right of those others to determine for themselves what they will listen to is strictly in the hands of this gang. Free speech, according to these, is limited to the freedom to speak or to hear only that which these personally approve.

The silence of the rest of the Left—not even the Star Tribune, a newspaper local to the region, spent any column inches on the thing—is clear: the Left as a whole agrees with this view that only speech of which the Left approves may be freely spoken.

Leaders

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They must lead, says the guy who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair, regarding the Palestinian attacks on Israelis in Jerusalem—although Kerry was referring to the Israeli government, too, as though the Palestinian Authority is on the same moral plane as the Israelis who are victims of the PA’s incitement.

Still, Kerry is right. All we need now is for the motorboat skipper to go back to his yacht, sit down, and be silent, so the Israeli leadership can lead unhindered.

It’s Not a Mystery

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Except to Steve Chapman, writing in Real Clear Politics.

It’s a mystery why, after allegedly tricking us into giving them everything they wanted, the Iranians would be so eager to evade these easy terms.

Iran’s leadership wants nuclear weapons, and they’ll do what they need to do to get them: talk interminably about a “deal” that purports to restrict their access, for a time, and then disregard the terms of the deal in order to continue their development and building efforts apace. This just isn’t that hard to understand.

Let’s consider the threat of cheating. One complaint is that the accord allows Iran to delay inspections of some sites for up to 24 days or more, making it easy to clean them up before the inspectors arrive. In fact, it wouldn’t be easy, because nuclear materials linger—not for weeks, but for centuries.

Back in 2003, when it was suspected of conducting forbidden nuclear experiments at one facility, Iran blocked International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors for more than six months. But when inspectors finally got in, they were able to detect telltale residues.

Couple things about this. In no particular order, the materials linger when they’re not cleaned up. Apparently Chapman thinks the Iranians are so stupid they learned nothing over the last dozen years from their less-than-effective cleanup efforts and being caught out.

From that incident those dozen years ago, no consequences ensued from the IAEA’s discovery. There’s little reason to believe a different outcome to any cheating today.

And, what Chapman carefully elided: the Iranians cheated then. Along those lines:

We don’t have to prove guilt. Iran has to prove innocence.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to do anything; they can continue their activities unaltered by any discovery of cheating. Never mind that no consequence can ensue from the cheating until it has been demonstrated that Iran has failed its proof.

But take the worst-case scenario. Suppose Iran commits a violation and our partners devise some ingenious way to block sanctions. Then what? The US would still have the ultimate recourse: military action.

Indeed. But what Chapman ignored is that the longer the delay on taking that ultimate recourse, the more expensive and the more chancy of success it will get.

Yet More Dishonesty Regarding the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

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John Kerry is at it again. Kerry was speaking to Council on Foreign Relations in New York when he said this:

I fear that what could happen is, if Congress were to overturn it [Kerry’s just concluded deal with Iran], our friends in Israel could actually end up being more isolated and more blamed….

Of course, Kerry knows, and so does his boss, President Barack Obama, that such isolation is entirely this administration’s decision. All the US would need to do is openly stand with Israel on the matter. Kerry is projecting his and Obama’s own behavior.

Kerry also said this to the CFR:

And we would lose Europe and China and Russia with respect to whatever military action we might have to take.

We’ve already lost the PRC and Russia; it’s hard for me to believe Kerry is unaware of that. Europe, in this context, is France and Germany. France publicly wanted a stronger, more measurable, more stringent deal that actually would have required Iran to agree to 24/7 (that’s 24 hour, 7 days per week, not 24 days’ notice with 7 appeals steps in the sequence) inspections and to verifiably completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program. Germany might have demurred, but that’s all. And if German intransigence killed the deal, that would have been better than what we got.

The Republicans are right on this travesty. The Democrats need to figure out whether they’re on the side of us and of Israel or on the side of Obama.

Nuclear Weapons Deal Agreed

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President Barack Obama and his lesser foreign policy wonk, John Kerry, have agreed that Iran can have nuclear weapons and the missile delivery systems to carry them.

This is from Omri Ceren, via Power Line:

The Iranian nuclear program will be placed under international sponsorship for R&D

Sort of: “a major power” will work with Iran to develop next-generation centrifuge technology, ostensibly merely for production of useful isotopes of various elements. Never mind that “isotope production” other than bombarding atoms with neutrons is exactly what is done to enriching uranium.

The sanctions regime will be shredded

Completely. The sanctions to be lifted are limited to sanctions against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. However, this better policy wonk than his policy wonks has agreed that all sanctions currently in place against Iran are to be defined as part of the “anti-nuclear weapons program” sanctions régime. Thus, sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, “conventional” weapons, and ballistic missiles will be lifted. This one is especially well done by Obama.

The US collapsed on anytime-anywhere inspections

Completely. The IAEA gets to ask, “Pretty please,” the Iranians get to say, “No,” and the whole thing goes to arbitration. With Iran as an arbitration panel member. With no deadline, no maximum time frame within which the question must be arbitrated.

Under this deal in our time, Iran gets to traffic in conventional arms, legally, in five years, and it gets to build/acquire ballistic missiles, legally, in eight years.

Iran’s legal path to nuclear weapons is wide open. Actually, that path is a multiplicity of multi-lane highways.

Obama, with a straight face, proclaims his pride in this failure. What a legacy he’s built.