In Israel America is Still That Gleaming Land of Greatness

 

The statements in this article are formed from the Israelis I have met and is hopefully something which continues to hold truthful as my experiences broaden. The vast majority of Israelis, particularly young Israelis, have an idealized view of the United States. They believe that in the United States opportunities exist like nowhere else on Earth. They see the United States as being capable of achieving just about anything they decide to put the efforts towards. This is not to say that they approve of everything the United States does or does not do that concerns the Israelis. Despite their love affair with the United States, that love affair sours rather rapidly when one takes stock in how Israeli feel about the United States governance. There many Israelis have more difficulty understanding as they see the United States as capable of doing unbelievable good if only the government would allow the people to take care of things themselves. You see, where one’s initial observation would be that the average Israeli has a view of the United States which is unrealistic, as you delve deeper you realize that they are not seeing the United States as perfect or they believe that things in the United States are perfect. What one sees is that the average Israeli loves Americans and their forms of governance and have just as jaundiced a view of the government as the most conservative Tea Party individual. Rumor says that this belief does not extend to much of one large city where their views match closer to Boston, New York, Los Angeles or most other large cities in the United States. Thus far I have avoided visiting this one city as I like the idealized view of the United States, well, more so the views of the average American citizen.

 

This view of America, as that is the real love, is that ideal America that went to the moon in less than a decade after deciding they were to meet that challenge. They love the concepts of full equality of opportunity and the spirit which made America great and is still there as a creative spark which is inside every human being but stifled more everywhere else outside America. The America most Israelis have experienced has been through the eyes of those who have visited the United States and seen the great potential which exists in the United States and these people have not stayed in the United States sufficiently long enough for the bad shortcomings to become just as easily witnessed thus bringing even the most devoted Israeli to see that there are places where the United States falls well short of the mark. Ask the average Israeli what they think of the United States and you get the feeling they believe that America can do no wrong. Dig a little deeper and you see a people whose idealized view is of the average American and their can do attitude becomes more of a could have been attitude which is more in line with reality.

 

One looks a little deeper and one begins to understand where the average Israeli gets their views on the United States and things begin to make sense. The average Israeli forms their views of the United States on the relatively small number of Americans they meet. Here in Israel most of the people get a small sample size and have only met Americans who have afforded not only trips to Israel but many have also an apartment that they own and plan on retiring and living in said apartment, so obviously the Americans they have met are the more wealthy and additionally their sampling consists solely of American Jews who are also Zionist and tend to be more conservative. Many of these Americans have completed college and are by and large physicians with many also being surgeons. So, their sample size is rather small and more indicative of the wealthier Americans and often include other than those in the medical fields, Americans who have some form of engineering or other scientific degrees and again often post graduate work with many having gotten their doctoral degree. So, again their sampling is skewed to successful Zionists which mean that they have again met mostly conservative people who have often also formed their own companies and many also hold a MBA degree to go along with their doctoral degree. To point out these are highly motivated people who would have succeeded in almost every nation in the Western world would be an understatement. If one speaks with the Americans who reside now in Israel after holding a successful career in the United States, many also fulfilled their required service in Israel as well. The sample size keeps being refined down to a very motivated and brilliant people who are driven and who meet very high criteria in education and accomplishments to their credit. These people tend to be conservative but still often voted as a good social liberal though they often had a very simple and basic filter which was dependent on one issue. Would their preferred candidate support Israel with almost a blind zeal bordering on fanaticism.

 

If one would make a list answering the question, ‘What is right about America?’ you would probably get a definition of the attitude of many of the Americans one meets in Israel. Giving even more validity to the assessment of the average American Jew who at some point after quite an impressive career decided to live in Israel and sufficient numbers of these people also gave half of their career time to working in Israel, there is an overwhelming number of the American Jews residing or regularly visiting Israel that have a less than admirable view of the current holder of the White House. As many of these people have what is called dual citizenship and are eligible to vote in the State they last resided in and do cast absentee ballots, their choices are easily researched and the story is quite telling; where in the United States President Obama won over seventy percent of the Jewish vote in both of his election victories, the Israeli Americans voted in the opposite direction with the 2008 votes exceeded three-quarters voting against President Obama and in 2012 an even higher percentage voted against his return to the White House. The consensus amongst the Americans here was obviously that President Obama was bad for Israel and the overt actions during the last Gaza war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They viewed President Obama directly for the closing off of Ben Gurion International Airport due to the terror threat which could have resulted in downed aircraft, something the United States had not done in Syria during the five year war continuing to rage nor have done in Lebanon, Libya or any of the nations struck by violence as a result of the Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter despite some of the most vicious threats to flights in or out of their countries. In some of these cases the airlines themselves refused to provide service to these nations. Then there was the channeling the resupply of arms which the United States was obliged to automatically approve with the military itself charged with authorizing and supplying replacements keeping Israel provided with the means for her defense through the State Department with their withholding approval until Israel had presumably buckled to the demand to cease their hostilities in Gaza and returned control of Gaza to its ‘duly elected government’ which is the same as saying Hamas as it is their people who rule in Gaza. The White House was fully aware of this situation and the obligation of the United States which they modified so as to make their obligation into a wanted dead or dead poster on Israel, and that is not a Freudian slip, dead or dead was exactly what the White House was aiming to produce by withholding the resupply which was an agreement included in a defense treaty making it the law to make such resupply in a timely manner.

 

 

Israel and America Stronger Together Enforcing Similar Ethos

 

 

This treaty was entered into for the Nixon Administration doing exactly the same withholding of the resupply to force Israel to comply with their demands that they simply cease fighting in defense against the invading forces of Syria and Egypt during the Yom Kippur War which caught Israel at her most vulnerable time with three-quarters of her military personnel in synagogues across Israel and not carrying any electronics and thus forcing the IDF to send personnel to as many Synagogues as possible and to send vehicles announcing the emergency call-up using loudspeakers and driving through one city after another. This withholding of resupply was advised by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a Jew but apparently only by birth. The reasoning Secretary Kissinger gave for refusing to meet the Israeli request for resupply was that by refusing to send the arms Israel would be more vulnerable and thus far more easily forced to meet the demands which the State Department was pushing for President Nixon to demand of the Israelis. Fortunately the resupply was held a dangerous two to three days and Israel had begun to run low on some vital armaments which would have threatened their ability to defend their country had resupply not reached them in time. This was the reason a treaty was signed by the Nixon Administration after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the agreement. If one has seen a potential viewpoint against all things Israel coming from the State Department, please allow us to also point out that the State Department very strenuously objected to the decision by President Truman to recognize Israel as a new nation in May of 1948, May 15th to be exact. The State Department has been more stridently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist from their objection to the aims of forming the British Mandate in order to form a homeland for the Jews after World War I as part of the San Remo Conference which set up the French and British Mandates.

 

Fortunately most young Israelis know very little about the dastardly designs of the State Department which by their actions have proven to desire the death of the Jewish State by any and all means available. Fortunate for Israel that this is beyond the ability for the State Department to pull-off but they will apparently continue to try. The love affair which Israelis appear to have with the United States is actually more with America and the American People and independent of the government of the United States. What makes this all the more rewarding a relationship is the fact that large majorities of Americans love the Israelis as well, as has been proven in poll after poll. This is likely due to a love of freedom and a shared morality in many ways. The Israeli government often appears to take their cues from the Constitution of the United States or at least the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments required by a number of the signatory states as a condition for their signing onto the Constitution. That is most likely the glue holding these two peoples in mutual support and admiration and it would be wonderful if their relationship continues and those values prove to be the perfect glue which both societies use as their moral guide throughout their histories. It would be quite sad should they not remain as the constant rock mooring both ships of state.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Could Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei be Right?

 

There is one leader in the world who has taken a unique view of the so-called Framework Agreement, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. He has decided to be neither for the Framework nor against the Framework for as he sees it, there really is no Framework to support or oppose. He has posted to his official website, “It’s all about the details. The disloyal side may want to stab Iran in the back over the details; it is too early to congratulate. What’s been done so far secures neither the main deal nor its contents nor is it even clear whether talks will bear fruit and lead to a deal.” The Ayatollah Khamenei might be the only commentator to actually call the Framework Agreement what it really is, all things to all people. As has been commented on this site and elsewhere, there appear to be as many versions of the Framework as there are commentators making their own assessments and predictions. The immediate reality which struck within hours of the announcement of there being a Framework Agreement there were commentaries from all fronts on the terms of the Framework Agreement. The White House gave their interpretation which included “fact sheet” which included the most rosy and wonderful set of conditions giving the indications that the P5+1 had procured every single item from even the most optimistic sources’ predictions of what would constitute the perfect agreement. Then there was the news of the Iranian conclusions about the Framework Agreement which granted Iran every last desire they could possibly have expected. Then there was what might be the actual best representation of the actual Framework Agreement given by the French and the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, both who held the supposed actual copies of the direct, interpretation free, translation of the actual Framework Agreement from which the United States and Iran each had made their own determination and translations. The unique, and in our opinion, near perfect interpretation and potentially most direct and honest translation of the actual Framework Agreement is the French version which is not required to fulfill any expectations nor infer any political intents satisfying public opinions and provide, false as they might be, feelings of safety and satisfaction of our hopes and dreams.

 

So, if we are expecting the framework agreement, as the citizens in the United States have been told by their media, was satisfied by the Framework Agreement, you will likely not be uplifted by the rest of this article. If you are seeking promises that your nations has hoodwinked the Western Imperialist fools and have used the wiles and tactics developed over the thousands of years or Persian history and conquest to deliver the perfect and most promising possible affirmation of your leaders promises, you too will likely be upset by the remainder of this article. Even those who have been left scratching their heads after reading the French version of the Framework Agreement and desire somebody to make sense out of the jumbled up mashing of contradictory terms and nonsensical jumble of words, we will not be much help here either. We will try to explain what has occurred, maybe even explain some of the why, and finally give a guess at what to expect between now and the June 30, next deadline. As far as the actual meaning of the Framework Agreement, we believe the French is by far the most accurate translation which is anything but satisfying.

 

The Ayatollah Khamenei probably nailed the true reality about the Framework Agreement, it was actually meaningless and was an acquiescing by the Iranian to allow President Obama and his supporting actors to perform their kabuki dance for their supporting media and spin doctors giving them the ability to appear victorious and gaining the upper hand and have bested the Iranians by issuing their fact sheet while the Iranians were happy to issue their own version of a fact sheet which supported a completely opposite set of realities drawn from the Framework Agreement. The French version tells us everything we need to understand about the Framework Agreement. It is simply the invention which permits a continued set of negotiations despite their original statements that the postponement to March 31 was to be the final delay for reaching an agreement. This addressed the promise to finally reach an accord by claiming that they had made progress and set down a set of agreements which would act as the skeleton of the eventual agreement which is now scheduled to be produced in another quarter of a year, three months. This was their way of allowing another stretching of the deadline kicking the can down the road. If one looks at the promises President Obama and his supporting staff and media have set as their interpretation, if not the actual terminology, of the Framework Agreement it does not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed nation, it merely puts that date off by ten years, the exact ten years which Islamic traditions allow for the application of a Hudna which states that the longest period any truce or treaty is permitted is a decade and which can be transgressed by the Islamic party to the Hudna if they feel they have the tactical advantage and strength which they had lacked when seeking the Hudna. Actually, the ten years limit to the majority of the terms of the agreement in the Framework Agreement may be the only accuracy which we can rely upon and yet it is also the most troubling of the claims made by the White House. We are not going anywhere near claiming that the ten year timing in the Framework Agreement and the fact that the Islamic limitation on treaties of such natures being limited by the Hudna to ten years makes President Obama a Muslim, but we would agree that he has a deeper knowledge of Islamic laws and practices and may be more sensitive to such nuances which has driven him to implement the ten year limitation for much of the Framework Agreement out of respect.

 

So, we have a Framework Agreement and have three separate and conflicting versions of said document with one being so vague and contradictory as to make it worthless, where does all this lead? It leads exactly where we have been before as this is far from the first extension of the nuclear weapons talks. This is notable because this extension is merely a quarter of a year compared to the previous delays which were often a year or longer. There was a statement by CIA Director John Brennan this past week when speaking to Fox News Sunday stating on Fox News Sunday, “I think they realize there’s going to be tremendous costs and consequences and implications if they were to decide to go for a breakout.” And if the deal fails, “If they decide to go down that route, they know they will do so at their peril.” There have been recent rumors that the Iranians have constructed a secret nuclear enrichment facility which was built in an area beneath one of the government buildings in order to conceal the construction from the world and the entrance. This location has been stocked with cascades of their newest model IR-8 centrifuges which spin somewhere around twenty times faster than their original centrifuges. This may be behind the latest estimate which claims that Iran currently has a breakout time of a mere couple of months, three at the longest, to building a nuclear warhead as they already have all the technical talent and abilities to produce such a weapon. This claim takes into consideration the advances the Iranians have made in their rocketry and other weapons including drones and cruise missiles and came to the conclusion that the sole impediment is the length of time it takes to enrich sufficient highly enriched uranium over ninety percent and fashion the core for the device which we have been currently told is approaching a full year but some have claimed the Iranians would only need a few months, somewhere between two and three months. What makes all this of interest is that it is possible that the Iranians desired this three month extension so they can produce at least one nuclear device and to announce that the negotiations are ended as Iran has joined the nuclear weapons club of nations. This would present the world with the worst possible result from talking the problem to death and by extending the time repeatedly the Western powers have failed hopelessly at attaining their expected goal of preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons. This has been our greatest fear here after the second time the talks were extended for yet another year or more as each of the extensions contained smaller additional extensions before simply setting a completely new date usually a year down the road. This frightening eventuality may be exactly what we will witness at the end of this latest push back of the deadline for an agreement. This is the problematic result of the hubris and superciliousness of the approach by President Obama and his haughty treatment of the Iran negotiations standing aloof and apart from the actual negotiations and simply seeing only that which he desired while ignoring everything else. Now President Obama may be about to be standing facing explaining how it was that Iran developed nuclear weapons not only on his watch but during President Obama’s declarations guaranteeing preventing their attaining such weapons.

 

There is one thing which can be guaranteed should an Iranian nuclear weapon be tested or used against either the Greater or Lesser Satan during his watch, he will simply blame it on George W. Bush, Benyamin Netanyahu and the Republicans who signed and sent the note to be published as an editorial aimed at the Iranians because, as we all have come to realize as this has been explained to us ad nauseum, it is absolutely impossible that President Obama and those he has assigned to carry out his directives to have failed unless a third party crossed some line and thus caused the misfortune. There will be much of the blame heaped on Israel, her Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, the close cabinet around Prime Minister Netanyahu and with additional blame heaped upon Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon for making threats which caused the Iranians great amounts of fear pushing them to hurriedly produce a nuclear weapon for their protection from this Israeli threat. What will be the result of this ever dithered, repeatedly suspended, and interminably put-off target date for a final agreement which simply had to eventually produce a nuclear weapons armed Iran just as the negotiations with North Korea resulted in a nuclear armed North Korea after former President Jimmy Carter promised the deal made along with the scheduled IAEA inspections would lock down their efforts preventing their reaching a nuclear bomb. We used many of the same people in negotiating these ever protracted and delayed negotiations which oft appeared more like an attempt to provide the Iranians sufficient time to forge ahead and produce nuclear weapons while they were not obligated by any treaty as the negotiations were still in progress. When, and if Iran decides to go to breakout and charge forward to establish themselves as the next nation to join the nuclear club there might be nothing to prevent their breakout just as nothing short of taking the military option off the table and implementing the less than perfect solution but perhaps the only option which will attain the desired results. We can bet that if President William Jefferson Clinton refused to use United States military troops and firepower to prevent North Korea from attaining nuclear weapons then there is absolutely no possibility that President Obama would use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed nation, and they are aware of this weakness and lack of fortitude, quite aware. And as we all understand, any arms displayed as part of national armaments will forever going forward have them as an option. Perhaps the only nation to choose to forgo nuclear arms after once having nuclear weapons has been South Africa who dismantled their nuclear armaments and destroyed everything which was part of the research and development such that if they were ever to decide to build another nuclear weapon they would need to start from square one. Still, it appears that Iran will become a nuclear armed nation in the near future if they desire such and there is nothing which will stand in their way. This is the sad reality of affairs and it appears that we will need to address what to do about a nuclear armed Iran and the ramification of an arms race spreading rapidly through the Middle East and also across North Africa spreading nuclear weapons capability in such a relatively unsteady area of the globe. G0d help us.

 

Beyond the Cusp