OBAMA: ARE DAYLIGHT WITH ISRAEL, BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT, OHIO VOTERS & BENGHAZI-GATE FOILING RE-ELECTION?

Remembering Yitzhak Rabin z”l

12 Heshvan 5756 – November 4, 1995

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Contents:

“Antisemitism in the Contemporary Middle East: Survey and Analysis”: Tuesday, October 30 5:30 PM, McGill

Obama's Real Record on Israel: Anne Bayefsky, FoxNews, Oct 23, 2012

President Obama has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq. President Obama told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel.

The Benghazi Story Refuses to Die: Walter Russell Mead, American Interest, Oct 28, 2012

We still don’t know exactly what happened between the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the White House as Americans in Libya requested support for Ambassador Stevens and his team in their final hours…

Ohio’s Crucial Independent Voters: Matt Hurley, Front Page Magazine, Oct 29, 2012

Do not trust anyone who claims to know what is going to happen in Ohio on Election Day.  The sheer number of variables in play here are plenty, and even the most experienced political observers are having difficulty decoding the Buckeye State.

Obama's Going to Lose…but Not Because He's Black: Perry Drake, American Thinker, Oct 29, 2012

The left is already beginning to point fingers at those they believe are responsible for what is shaping up to be a decisive rout in the making for President Obama and the Democrats on Election Day

On Topic Links

New Projection of Election Results: Romney 52, Obama 47: Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard, Oct 29, 2012

Battle for White House – Electoral Map: Real Clear Politics, Oct 29, 2012

Romney Soars in Pensacola: Quin Hillyer, American Spectator, Oct 29, 2012

In Virginia, Turnout Matters: Debra McCown, American Spectator, Oct 26, 2012

Would Obama Incite Civil Unrest to Win? : Daren Jonescu, American Thinker, October 29,

Senior Research Fellow, Global Research in

International Affairs Center, IDC, Herzliya

Tuesday, October 30 @ 5:30 PM

Leacock Building, Rm. 738

McGill University

OBAMA'S REAL RECORD ON ISRAEL

Anne Bayefsky

FoxNews, October 23, 2012

During the final debate, President Obama pointed to his 2008 pre-election visit to Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, as an answer to Governor Romney’s criticism of his foreign policy on Israel.  That same stop was made by over a million visitors and hundreds of world leaders and dignitaries the same year.  Invoking it as a means to establish the President’s pro-Israel credentials is an insult to the intelligence of voters who care about the welfare of the Jewish state….

Undoubtedly, keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive is a service not only to Jews but to anyone interested in preserving and protecting universal human rights and freedoms.  But the question before American voters, who value our special bond with the Middle East’s only democracy, is whether the specifics of the president’s four-year record are consistent with the well-being of the people who live and breathe Jewish self-determination as a bulwark against modern anti-Semitism….

President Obama has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq. President Obama told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel.

President Obama has legitimized the UN body most responsible for demonizing Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator.  The president joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 and is now seeking a second 3-year term, despite Israel’s requests that he do the opposite. 

President Obama made Israeli settlements the key stumbling block in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Starting in 2009 he chose to castigate Israel publicly, often, and in extreme terms at the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Palestinians took the president’s cue and ended direct negotiations until such time as Israel capitulates, even though the subject is supposed to be a final status issue. President Obama treated Israel’s Prime Minister to a series of insulting snubs during his visit to the White House in March 2010.

President Obama cut a deal with Islamic states at a May 2010 meeting of parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, contrary to assurances given to Israel. He agreed to help convene a 2012 international conference intended to pivot attention towards disarming Israel and is currently negotiating the details of this diplomatic onslaught.

President Obama introduced in his September 2010 address to the General Assembly, a September 2011 timeline for full Palestinian statehood and membership in the UN, thus encouraging Palestinians to push the same unilateral move.   President Obama suggested in May 2011 that Israel use the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations – knowing full well that Israel considers those borders to be indefensible, and that agreements require the border issue to be determined by the parties themselves.

President Obama created a “global counter-terrorism forum” in September 2011 and invited eleven Muslim states to join – on the grounds that they were “on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism.”  At the insistence of Turkey, he then denied entry to Israel. President Obama told French President Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2011 – when he thought he was off-mike – that he regretted having to deal with Israel’s Prime Minister.

President Obama asked Congress in February 2012 to waive a ban on American funding of UNESCO. The ban had been imposed following UNESCO’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and was consistent with U.S. law denying funding for any international organization that recognized Palestinian statehood in the absence of a peace agreement with Israel.

President Obama has indeed put daylight between American and Israeli policy on Iran.  In August, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dempsey said: “our clocks are ticking at different paces” and he wouldn’t be “complicit” in an Israeli effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In September Secretary Clinton explained this divergence. In her words, the Iranian threat is “existential” only for Israel;  only Israel is “right in the bull’s eye.”  President Obama’s “pro-Israel” policy, therefore, is to wait past the point that the intended victim of the planned genocide believes is safe. President Obama denied Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request to meet with him in September, despite the Iranian peril.

President Obama’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, didn’t even attend the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to the UN General Assembly in September – during which he made a plea for global attention to the Iranian threat. And on Monday night, at the final debate, Governor Romney answered the question he was asked about what poses the greatest threat to our national security with “a nuclear Iran,” while President Obama responded “terrorist networks.”

Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. An Iranian nuclear weapon will result in a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world. And it will make the chance of nuclear weapons ending up in the hands of terrorists all the more likely. It isn’t hard to figure out which man will better partner with Israel to combat anti-semitism today and ensure that the lesson of Yad Vashem is more than a glib debating point.  (Top of Page)

THE BENGHAZI STORY REFUSES TO DIE

Walter Russell Mead

American Interest, October 28, 2012

We still don’t know exactly what happened between the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the White House as Americans in Libya requested support for Ambassador Stevens and his team in their final hours, and we almost certainly won’t before the election.

But that doesn’t do the administration much good. As various departments and officials leak to save their careers and retaliate against rivals, grenades keep getting lobbed and emails and memos keep getting leaked. The result is that the attack in Benghazi isn’t fading out of the news. As the last undecided voters make up their minds, the media outlets following this story with the greatest attention keep getting enough ammunition to keep the story alive and force the rest of the media to acknowledge the story, and that doesn’t help a White House simultaneously wrestling with a close election and a massive mutant storm hurtling at the East Coast.

President Obama took office vowing to calm the seas and cool the earth; he is running for re-election in a world gone wild. What the White House wants and needs from Libya is no news at all; it needs for the people there to be quietly minding their business and rebuilding their land….

The drip drip drip of new revelations, however, is the worst kind of news. Even though many of the new stories are minor, and some contain information that is actively helpful to the White House, anything that keeps this story alive makes the President’s re-election just a little bit tougher….

President Obama based his campaign on his success in calming the troubled waters overseas. He is liquidating wars, not starting them. He is cooling the hot anger in the Islamic world. He is promoting peace, reconciling adversaries, giving peace a chance.

He could have run as a safe pair of hands in a scary world. He could have said that the terrorists are out there, plotting against us night and day. That our enemies are trying to win over the masses to launch a new clash of civilizations. That the situation in Iran presents the United States with its biggest challenge since the fall of the Soviet Union. In that kind of world, who can you trust? Obviously, the campaign could have said, an experienced man, tough enough to kill bin Laden, but deft enough to reach out to moderates in the Middle East. No gaffe-prone challenger would be safe in these troubled times.

But the Obama administration believes that civilianizing American political discourse is necessary for Democrats to do well over the long haul, and to shift resources from the defense budget to domestic priorities. Talk of threats and terrorist enemies appalls and disheartens the Democratic base. The President therefore decided to run as the man who built peace and, if given four more years, would build that much more.

He therefore needs for the world to look calm. Anything that undercuts that narrative undercuts his campaign. This is the most important problem Benghazi creates for him: it suggests a genuinely poisonous alternative narrative that the President in his naive eagerness to spread democracy and build bridges to moderates opened the door to radicals and then failed to deal with the threat they posed.

The rise of this alternative perception is probably why the President has been losing his advantage on foreign policy in the post-debate polls….President Obama needs Benghazi to go away. Even with hurricanes and tsunamis it appears unlikely to do so; count this as another factor that has risen up to complicate what once looked like a relatively smooth campaign to renew President Obama’s White House lease.  (Top of Page)

OHIO’S CRUCIAL INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Matt Hurley

Front Page Magazine, October 29, 2012

Do not trust anyone who claims to know what is going to happen in Ohio on Election Day.  The sheer number of variables in play here are plenty, and even the most experienced political observers are having difficulty decoding the Buckeye State.

Polling the electorate in Ohio is tough, and many public polls over-sample Democrats enough to skew results beyond their stated margin of error percentages.  This is nothing new for Ohio, though, as typical polling of just about any race in Ohio will show whether the election is an issue race or an election of officials….

There are two polls that seem to have figured out how to get realistic numbers in Ohio.  Rasmussen Reports’ most recent poll shows the race tied and has been within the margin of error for months.  The Ohio Poll by the University of Cincinnati is the other but they have not released a poll on this race since late August when they declared the race a toss-up.

There is, however, one piece of good news for the Romney campaign that seems to have been overlooked by most commentators covering the race in Ohio.  In all 19 of the public polls released since the first debate, Mitt Romney has gained and held the lead among Ohio’s independents.  Ohio’s independent voters have determined the winner in at least five recent major elections in the Buckeye State and are considered to be kingmakers or heartbreakers in any election here.

Polling only tells part of the story.  Republicans in Ohio tell of great strides being made on the ground and momentum appears to have shifted in their direction.  A recently released memo from the Romney campaign on the state of the race in Ohio highlighted a few items that illustrate that shift.

Ohio Republicans are outperforming their share of voter registration in absentee requests and early voting by over 8.5 points thus far.  They also claim to have closed the gap in early voting and absentee voting in the last two weeks as well by outperforming in Ohio’s largest counties.  This demonstrates that Republicans are impacting the momentum of the voting as Election Day approaches….

One other factor that may have a significant impact this cycle is a holdover from the previous election.  Ohio’s labor unions came out in force against the Republicans’ attempt to reform public sector pensions.…It appears, however, that the Obama campaign failed to encourage continuing that momentum, as the unions have largely been silent this time, perhaps in part because of the administrations ongoing War on Coal, which has heavily impacted the south eastern part of Ohio.

Romney’s debate performance and Obama’s mishandling of the Benghazi terrorist assassination of our ambassador are two things driving momentum in Ohio.  In a purely unscientific survey of Ohio voters on Facebook, jobs and the economy still rank as top issues of concern, but a few sleeper issues have emerged as well….

The sleeper issue that might have the most impact, however, is energy.  Whether it is the price of gasoline or the Environmental Protection Agency meddling in coal and oil policy, a significant number of Ohio voters will be affected by this election; the aftermath of which will likely determine whether thousands of energy sector jobs materialize in Ohio or not.

Ohio voters are well aware of the consequences of their vote.  Historically, no Republican has ever captured the White House without winning Ohio and this is another election season where Ohioans will likely decide the race.  The winner of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes will be whichever side maximizes turnout on Election Day….If turnout is higher than 2008 in the red counties and we see an increase in Republican turnout in the blue counties, then it will be a good night for Mitt Romney. 

(Top of Page)

OBAMA'S GOING TO LOSE…BUT NOT BECAUSE HE'S BLACK
Perry Drake
American Thinker, October 29, 2012

The left is already beginning to point fingers at those they believe are responsible for what is shaping up to be a decisive rout in the making for President Obama and the Democrats on Election Day.

The New York Times is among the first out of the blame gate, with an article by Matt Bai taking Bill Clinton to task.  Clinton, according to Bai, has foolishly steered the Obama campaign to switch its more promising strategy of attacking Mitt Romney as a serial flip-flopper (in the vein of John Kerry) to one striving to paint him as a mean, evil conservative, à la Ebenezer Scrooge. That strategy went kaput once Romney proved himself to be a decent, likeable guy in the first debate.  C'est la vie.

Beating the Times to the punch, though, have been blacks who for years have insisted that any and all criticisms of Obama are based solely on nothing but the color of his skin — the culmination of which occurred in the aftermath of his sorry-ass performance in the first debate against Romney, when the president's electoral fortune began its steady, inexorable decline. 

To blacks, it had nothing to do with Obama's serial "ahs" and "ums" and dull, slow-witted responses to Romney.  No, it was because the president had to play it safe for fear that if he didn't, he would be considered an "angry black man" to white, racist-inclined voters.  This from Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyso….

I'm declaring myself an "angry black man," but I'm not afraid to let everyone know why.  I'm angry that four years after America elected its first "black" president, the unemployment rate remains the highest in the black community at 14.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  And that's just the headline rate.  The actual rate is much higher. Chalk me up as a racist for pointing that out.

I'm angry that over the last four years, the medium net worth of black households has experienced the steepest decline of any demographic group in the U.S. — a phenomenon that caused even the liberal-leaning Associate Press to label it as "The Disappearing Black Middle Class." But just dismiss me as a racist.

I'm angry that gas prices have doubled and household bills are skyrocketing, which has struck hardest in the black community during every year of Obama's watch. I accept that I'm a racist for noticing.

I'm angry that despite black parents' desperate efforts to rescue their children from rotten, crime-ridden public schools, Obama's first budget eliminated a school voucher program that provided tuition assistance to poor black youths in Washington, D.C.  Thank the Lord that House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican allies — "white racists" one and all — to be sure, were on hand to force Obama to reverse course and reinstate the program….

I'm angry that even in the face of the president's obvious failures, blacks continue to overwhelmingly defend and support a person who has clearly demonstrated that he couldn't give a damn about them and whose policies have done so much to spread despair and hopelessness in their community as well as in all other communities across the nation….

But most of all, I'm angry that black people continue to use white racism as their automatic excuse for every setback and failure in life.  Why is that, you ask?  As with most things in life, if you want to get to the truth, all you need do is follow the money.  If you're black and in the position to get in on the game early, crying racism at the drop of a hat can be quite lucrative.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Juan Williams, Dyson, and innumerable other black columnists, television pundits, celebrities, and self-described leaders discovered that a long time ago.  If racism magically disappeared overnight, they would each have to find some other way to make a living.  Racism is their bread and butter.  That's why as long as there are poor blacks, there will always be no shortage of black elites blaming it on white racism and getting rich in the process.  Good work if you can get it.  Where do I put in my application?

The real tragedy of it all is that millions of poor blacks have fallen prey to the self-serving aims of Obama and the racial grievance industry in the black community and have rejected the time-proven qualities of persistence, hard work, and self-reliance that would more surely help them make their and the lives of their families much better. But where's the percentage in that?

(Top of Page)

Projection of Election Results: Romney 52, Obama 47: Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard, Oct 29, 2012

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent.  The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

Battle for White House – Electoral Map: Real Clear Politics, Oct 29, 2012

Obama/Biden: 201, Romney/Ryan: 191, Toss Ups:146

Romney Soars in Pensacola: Quin Hillyer, American Spectator, Oct 29, 2012

Romney seemed remarkably at ease, his delivery fluent and eminently real. Again and again, in a natural and unforced way, he worked local references into the narrative arc of his speech on big, decidedly national issues such as military spending, trade, and Obamacare.

In Virginia, Turnout Matters: Debra McCown, American Spectator, Oct 26, 2012

"I think turnout in the 9th [Congressional] District is key. I think it's crucial," said Bob Gibson, a local elected official and Republican chairman in Russell County, one of Virginia's seven coal-producing counties. "I think it's a unique opportunity for Southwest Virginia to not only decide Virginia; we could decide the whole national election."

Would Obama Incite Civil Unrest to Win? : Daren Jonescu, American Thinker, Oct 29, 2012

Is President Obama willing to incite civil unrest to win re-election?  As we have all been encouraged to wear our dog-whistle decoders these days, one can hardly be blamed for wondering.  Worse yet, we know the answer.  He is already doing it.

Ber Lazarus, Publications Editor, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org

Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com