Kerry Recognizes Genocide of Christians By Middle East Muslims, White House Reluctant

But Israelis and Jews are excluded from the ISIS genocide?

[From article]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced Thursday that the State Department had found ISIS responsible for genocide in areas it controls.
“My purpose here today is to assert in my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims,” he said at the State Department, referring to ISIS by one of the other names by which it is known.
The move has been a long time coming.
[. . .]
If American actions were meant to pre-empt such genocide, they apparently failed. In the past few months, ISIS’s campaign against the region’s ethnic and religious minorities, including the persecution of Assyrian Christians and Yazidis, has been formally declared “genocide” by the European Parliament and the United States National Holocaust Museum. (The former of these designations is particularly noteworthy since it was both unanimous and the first time a conflict had been categorized as a “genocide” in real time.)
[. . .]
Earlier this week, the U.S. House of Representatives joined the call, voting 393-0 to designate Islamic State crimes “genocide.”
[. . .]
Still, it’s unclear what, if any, legal obligations the designation compels. That ISIS is a non-state actor is a complicating factor since the 1948 Convention on genocide, in the words of one expert, is “predicated on the notion that only states commit these crimes.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/isis-genocide-obama/474087/

The Long, Thorny Path to Calling ISIS 'Genocidal'
Secretary of State John Kerry announced ISIS is responsible for genocide in areas it controls. The move has been a long time coming.
Adam Chandler
Mar 17, 2016


* * *



[From article]
It’s not clear exactly what is being done to Christians in the Middle East right now (an excuse similar to that made by world leaders in the late 1930s when Jews were being rounded up and killed in Nazi Germany), but what we do know is grim. In 2003, over 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq. By the summer of 2015, there were fewer than 275,000. Most were eking out a nightmarish existence in camps in Kurdistan. The numbers are similar among Syrian Christians: approximately 1.25 million in 2011, fewer than 500,000 today.
Of the missing millions, some have been kidnapped, tortured, and held at absurd bails. Some have been sold into slavery or forced into “marriage” with ISIS fighters. We know many are dead, but we can’t determine how many.
[. . .]
When ISIS moves into a town, the houses belonging to Christians are marked with the Arabic letter nun, or N (for “Nazarene”), painted in red on their doors. Christians then must choose whether to flee or wait for their fate. Those who flee must choose between trying to survive in the wilderness and making their way to U.N. camps, where Christians live in fear of jihadists who infiltrate the camps to kill “infidels.” Many Christians in the Middle East have simply disappeared, their fate as mysterious as that of the Jews of Europe in 1945 before the Allies discovered the death camps scattered across the Third Reich.
In 1948, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations drafted the Treaty on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. It defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” Such acts include killing, causing serious mental or physical harm, causing conditions of life that will destroy the group, preventing childbirth, and kidnapping children. According to the treaty, United Nations member states, including the United States, must take action against such conditions. The goal was to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust would happen again.
A noble idea, but it hasn’t worked. Since 1948, genocide has clearly been committed multiple times, with no response until it was too late. American presidents in particular have made deliberate policy decisions to not call genocide “genocide,” even in the face of plenty of evidence, because they didn’t want to be responsible for acting. For example, during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, radical members of the Hutu tribe set out to exterminate their rival tribe, the Tutsis, as well as any Hutus who got in the way. The Clinton administration chose not to apply the word “genocide” openly until long after the evidence merited it. Only after 800,000 Rwandans had been slaughtered in 100 days and the bloodbath had run its course did officials finally start to call it genocide.
For a while the Clinton administration protested ignorance, but recently declassified documents tell a different story: CIA reports reaching the cabinet, and most likely the president himself, before the crisis had reached a climax confirmed the existence of a Hutu plan for a “final solution” to the Tutsis, a phrase grimly reminiscent of Hitler’s plan to kill all Jews. Barely two weeks into the 100-day nightmare, a CIA brief sent to the president, the vice president, and hundreds of senior officials reported that rebels were trying to “stop the genocide, which . . . is spreading south.” As always, though, everything depended on what the meaning of the word “is” was.
No American president has ever applied the word “genocide” to a current event or situation. The way is now paved for President Obama to become the first. On January 27 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed (117 votes to 1) a resolution to hold ISIS responsible for genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities. The European Parliament adopted the resolution on February 4. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee declared genocide on March 2. The British Parliament appears to be leaning toward a similar declaration. All President Obama has to do is jump on the bandwagon. But he hasn’t.
For more than seven years, President Obama’s foreign policy has been a toxic blend of strong language and weak action. [. . .] The foreign policy of the Obama administration tends toward talking a big game and then conveniently forgetting to show up. That would be a lot harder to pull off if he called the genocide of Christians by ISIS what it is. So naturally he’s avoiding it, like the Clinton administration before him.
Congress has spoken. Obviously, President Obama feels that he is under no obligation to consider Congress’s opinion on pretty much anything, but this time he should think long and hard and not ignore it. If his secretary of state, John Kerry, agrees to designate ISIS’s atrocities genocide, that could force the administration to act with the European Union to take military action against ISIS soon. President Obama may want to avoid that policy, but his failure to confront the genocide and name it would be the nail in the coffin of his foreign-policy legacy. If the 20th century taught us anything, it’s that ignoring genocide doesn’t make it go away. If we won’t call it what it is, our children will do it for us, and we’ll have to answer the difficult question of why we wouldn’t do it ourselves.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432793/genocide-christians-isis-congress-obama-john-kerry-state-department

Why Obama and Kerry Fear the ‘G’ Word
by JANE CLARK SCHARL
March 14, 2016 7:38 PM

rtment

Why Obama and Kerry Fear the ‘G’ Word

by JANE CLARK SCHARL March 14, 2016 7:38 PM

John Kerry Unsure Mass Murder of Christians By Muslims is Genocide

Under current White House only Muslims can be victims. And anyway saying bad things about Muslims is worse crime against humanity than murdering Christians and Jews. Not like this is something new. See e.g., Act For America founder Brigitte Gabriel whose parents were murdered by Muslims in Lebanon. Kerry is thinking about it.

[Transcript of hearing included]
[From article]
Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State and Foreign Assistance today that he is having an “additional evaluation” done to help him determine whether the systematic murder of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East—at the hands of the Islamic State and others—should be declared “genocide.”
“I will make a decision on it as soon as I have that additional evaluation and we will proceed forward from there,” Kerry said.
Kerry was responding to a question put to him by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R.-Neb.), who is the sponsor of a resolution that would declare on behalf of Congress that it is in fact genocide.
[. . .]
Fortenberry told Kerry about a young Syrian man who had been murdered by jihadists after refusing to renounce his Christian faith.
“I had the extraordinary privilege of being in the room with Pope Francis when he, in a very powerful moment, was given a small cross, a Christian crucifix,” said Fortenberry. “That crucifix had belonged to a young Syrian man who had been captured by the jihadists, and he was told to choose: Convert or die. And he chose his ancient faith tradition. He chose Christ, and he was beheaded.”
“His mother was able to recover the body, recover this cross, and bury him,” said Fortenberry. “She fled to Austria, which set the stage for this moment which I witnessed.”
“Mr. Secretary, this is repeating itself over and over and over again against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in the region,” said Fortenberry.
“What I’m urging here today,” said Fortenberry, “is that you use the authority and power of your office to call this genocide, to help restore the rich tapestry of the ancient faith traditions in the Middle East, to stop this assault on human dignity and civilization itself.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/kerry-state-doing-additional-evaluation-decide-if-slaughter-mideast

Kerry Having ‘Additional Evaluation’ Done to Decide if Slaughter of Mideast Christians is Genocide
By Terence P. Jeffrey

February 24, 2016 | 3:14 PM EST

John Kerry's Misguided Response About Palestinian Terror

[From article]
About midnight, on October 21st, a man wielding a knife lunged at a border patrol officer. The assailant was shot four times.
Did you hear about this incident? Probably not. That’s because the incident took place took place not somewhere in Israel, where all incidents of this type are recorded and broadcast around the world, but at the border crossing in Calexico, California, just across the border from Mexicali, Mexico.
The reason the man was shot by a Border & Patrol Protection officer and, subsequently, died from his wounds, should be obvious. People wielding knives and lunging at police—or anyone else, intend to injure or kill and it is essential to stop those attacker immediately—before they do their harm and people are killed.
This incident did not make international headlines. There was no outcry and no rage for the poor guy even after details emerged and we learned that he was on a bicycle and jumped off it to perpetrate his attack and that he was denied entry into the United States and that was why he went on his rampage.
There is a double standard here.
If this incident would have happened in Israel, the country’s many critics would be screaming about the murder of innocent people riding their bikes. The Palestinian propaganda machine would have turned the truth upside down to convince the world that the killer was the victim.
[. . .]
This is a war where lies and false rumors are the ammunition of the propagandists. And Israel is losing.
[. . .]
The vast amount of Palestinians who have been injured during this terror spree were the terrorists themselves. And they were injured or killed in the midst of the act of terror. Israel is killing terrorists—not innocent teenagers.
[. . .]
Sometimes, a man’s got to do what a man—or woman—has got to do. And shooting someone who wants to take your life is as correct and appropriate a response at the border between California and Mexico as it is in the clash between terrorist Palestinians and Israeli citizens.

http://observer.com/2015/10/double-standards-and-double-speak-pits-the-us-against-israel/

Double Standards and Doublespeak Pits the US Against Israel
By Micah Halpern

10/26/15 7:36am

American Foreign Affairs Crumbling, Putin Takes Charge

Vladimir Putin

[From article]
Under Obama and the Left, America has retreated from the world. We have abandoned our allies, all the way from Japan and South Korea to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Obama has supported the paleofascist Ikhwan (brotherhood) in the Sunni Arab world, and Iran in the Shi'ite half of Islam. China has snatched a major part of the South China Sea, with its undersea mineral wealth. Russia is gradually pushing Europe back from the East.



While Obama was distracting you with Mohammed the bomb-faking kid, Russia made a major anti-Iran, anti-Obama move in Syria, sending a reported 2,000 personnel to take over a large Syrian airbase in Latakia, along with the naval port of Tartous.
[. . .]



Assad will owe his survival to Uncle Putin, not the theocracy of Iran.
Putin has an alliance of convenience with Tehran, but Russia has centuries of experience fighting Muslim enemies, all the way to the end of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Putin has battled Muslim rebels in Chechnya and doesn't need a rising nuclear Caliphate next door, an hour's flight from Russia’s borders.
Putin is nobody's friend. He is a Russian nationalist, with a close domestic alliance with the Orthodox Church, just like the czars.
[. . .]



By rescuing the Saudis and Israel from Iranian aggression, Putin is piling up IOU's in the fast-changing world of energy politics. The world price of oil is collapsing with the spread of shale exploitation, and there is no way to stop it. China is becoming a shale producer in the South China Sea.
[. . .]




Western Europe keeps importing hostile Muslim populations from Pakistan, Africa, and the Middle East. The Germans just collapsed in the face of a phony invasion by thousands of "refugees," many men of military age, who did not bother to hide their hatred for their new welfare hosts. Europe's flabbiness is an open invitation to aggressors, both Russia and Islam, and Russia seems more rational.
[. . .]



Only Russia has the will and the military capacity to resist jihad by infiltration. France just launched a bombing raid against ISIS training camps, which happened to coincide with Putin's troop movement into Syria, which also claims to be a move against ISIS.
Our (former) allies, Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, having been backstabbed by Obama, are not saying a word against the Russian move into Syria. They may not trust Putin, but they can make deals with him. They know what he wants. Saudi Arabia can offer oil and price coordination with Russia, and help to control the Chechen rebels. Israel can utilize its new shale discoveries in the Eastern Med, and is a valuable source of badly needed technology; Egypt is in desperate straits in fighting ISIS and the Ikhwan, and can use direct military help in the Sinai Desert. Even Jordan has been directly threatened by the Iranians.
One big name is missing in all this: America.
[. . .]
As long as Obama is in power, things are likely to get worse for America.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/russia_is_the_new_hegemon.html

September 30, 2015
Russia is the New Hegemon
By James Lewis

Yank Cord Now

U.S. Secretary Of State, Pre Crash

[From article]
Secretary of State John Kerry said in late July that he was not sure if the Iranians were serious about wanting to destroy Israel; this after years of insisting that they do. [. . .]
In his book he calls Israel an “infected cancer,” which was the language about Jews used by Adolf Hitler.
Khamenei declares that the salvation of the Muslim world to be dependent on defeating Israel. “The Zionist occupiers are antihuman and their state must be annihilated.”
[. . .]
On the very day, July 14, the deal was signed, there were tens of thousands of demonstrators in Iran organized by the regime chanting “Death to America!” and one has the right ask, “Have Obama and Kerry and those who support their deal lost their minds?
Obama and Kerry, spiritually speaking, seem to have emerged from the putrid afterbirth of the lunatic 1960s and 70s. Kerry was one of the most despicable Americans in that period. He went to Viet Nam with a movie camera to be photographed as a soldier “in country” with a view to his future political career, and the medals that he came home with -- there is reason to believe -- were fraudulently awarded.[. . .]He made himself famous by badmouthing and betraying his former comrades-in-arms by calling them war criminals. He was the male “Jane Fonda” of the day who flew off to Paris to shake hands with the enemy Communist Viet Cong.
As for Obama who was a boy at that time, the Communist Franklin Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky, father of seditious “community organizing,” were his political mentors. As an adult, he then befriended two others among the more reprehensible public figures of the age, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, both domestic, violent opponents of the American way of life.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/yank_the_emergency_cord_now.html

August 12, 2015
Yank the Emergency Cord Now!
By Sha'i ben-Tekoa

Empty Dinner Plates Create Terrorists

[From article]
This is the confab where Obama again mentioned America’s Muslim founding fathers. You know, like Osama Ben Franklin. Then they floated their Jobs for Jihadis program for the genocidal ethnic cleansers, I mean aspiring rappers, who are turning their lives around.
You’ve surely seen the list of proposed new Islamist anti-poverty agencies: Be-Head Start, the Jobs Corpse, etc.
[. . .]
“In our era,” Kerry sniffed, “poisonous ideas can come from almost anywhere. … In some cases, they may come from … the contrast between one family’s empty dinner plate and a fancy restaurant’s lavish menu.”

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2015/02/carr_bloodthirsty_try_liveshot_s_menu

Carr: Bloodthirsty? Try Liveshot’s menu
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
By: Howie Carr
Boston Herald

US Israel Relations, Why Does Kerry Impose Double Standard On Israel?

[From article]
Earlier on Friday, Ynet revealed that the Obama administration refused the Israeli defense minister's request to meet with other top officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
Since then, reports have said the same officials tried to prevent Ya'alon from meeting with the US' UN ambassador Samantha Power – and when the two did meet, Ya'alon reportedly heard mostly of Power's objection to settlement construction.
During the last bout of US-led peace talks, Ya'alon dubbed Kerry's diplomatic efforts "obsessive and messianic," saying "Kerry should win his Nobel and leave us in peace." Ya'alon's current treatment is said to be an attempt to settle the score.
Ya'alon did hold a successful meeting with his US counterpart, Chuck Hegal, indicating that the reason for the cold shoulder was more a testament to personal tensions between Ya'alon and the White House than an attempt to sabotage Israel's relations with the US.
[. . .]
Ya'alon also infuriated officials in Washington with comments accusing the administration of being weak on Iran and by questioning the US commitment to Israel's security. That followed reports that Ya'alon had criticized Kerry for being unrealistic and naive in trying to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4584052,00.html

Lapid: Israel-US relations in 'crisis'
After Ynet learns White House officials prevented defense minister from meeting Kerry and Biden, Lapid says 'We need to act with more respect. We must remember that US funds and technology helped Gaza operation.'
Moran Azulay
Published: 10.25.14, 20:17 / Israel News

* * *


John Kerry (left), with Benjamin Netanyahu

[From article]
Like a regular mantra, US Secretary of State John Kerry has a habit of saying that the Israeli-Palestinian issue cannot remain unchanged.
Strangely enough, he isn't saying that about the conflict in Syria, where the death toll has already crossed the 200,000 mark with people being slaughtered, beheaded and dying in different ways, on its way to the 250,000 mark; he isn't saying that about four million refugees from Syria and 10 million displaced people; he isn't saying that about the Islamic State, which is beheading people and butchering minorities; he isn't saying that about Iraq, which has been torn into pieces, or about Baghdad's airport which is about to fall into the hands of jihadist terror.
He isn't saying that about Libya either, a country controlled by a coalition of insane jihad organizations, on the verge of Europe. He isn't saying that about Yemen, which has died and is controlled by wild tribes navigated from behind the scenes by the "smiling" Iran; he isn't saying that about the intolerable uranium enrichment in Tehran, which has him and the West wrapped around its little finger.
He isn't saying that about Russia either, which not only conquered eastern Ukraine, but also annexed the huge Crimea region. It isn't an "occupation," after all; that only exists in Israel.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4583494,00.html

Why is Kerry singling out Israel?
Op-ed: US secretary of state keeps saying Israeli-Palestinian issue cannot remain unchanged. What about the situation in Syria, Iraq, Russia, China and Turkey?
Published: 10.25.14, 11:44 / Israel Opinion

Destroying The Nation From Within

[From article]
The Islamic enemy is completely unified in their stated objectives, yet the entire U.S. Government leadership from the President, to his National Security Advisor, to the heads of the CIA, FBI, DHS, and Military, and the Cabinet Secretaries all march in unison stating none of this has to do with Islam. From this grotesque lack of intellectual and factual honesty come strategic blunders that leave a person speechless.
The President states ISIS is “not Islamic” yet continues to support the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas, Al Qaeda forces and others in places like Syria and Libya. Secretary of State Kerry stated before Congress recently that “(ISIS is) the enemy of Islam. That’s what they are. There’s nothing in Islam that condones or suggests people should go out and rape women and sell off young girls or give them as gifts to jihadists and, you know, cut people’s heads off.” Apparently, neither has read Islamic Law which explicitly calls for these things. As a matter of fact, beheadings and crucifixion are part of the Hadud Laws which are specifically articulated in the Quran.
The President and his Chief of Staff (former Deputy National Security Advisor), FBI Director, Director of Central Intelligence, Secretary of Homeland Security, and others continue to look to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in America to give them their info on Islam and Sharia, as well as allowing these jihadis to write doctrine for domestic counterterrorism strategy and foreign policy – which is why our leaders are clueless. This cluelessness allows our enemies to extract the very outcome they are gunning for – complete strategic incoherence. When the FBI fails in these duties, state and local law enforcement officials are left out to dry.

http://blog.understandingthethreat.com/2014/10/15/total-strategic-incoherence/

Total Strategic Incoherence
By JG
October 15, 2014

US Sen. Boxer Forgets Her Insults

[From article]< Barbara Boxer was “shaking and trembling” in shock at Senator Corker’s supposedly harsh questioning of Secretary of State John Kerry about his announced plans to destroy the Islamic State. Oh, how we forget. Do we remember Senator Boxer in 2005 when she grilled National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in hearings following the latter’s nomination to the position of secretary of state—likewise at a time of war? Boxer called Secretary of State designate Rice a veritable liar (e.g., selling a war “overwhelmed your respect for the truth”). Not much respect there.
Worse, two years later she then stooped to suggest that the fact that Rice was single and childless made her less credible in advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein (“You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.”) Again, as in the case of Vice President Joe Biden’s use of “Shylock,” we are back to the medieval practice of exemption.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388356/selective-trembling-victor-davis-hanson

Selective Trembling
By Victor Davis Hanson
September 18, 2014 4:17 PM

Kerry Out Of Touch With New Global Lack Of Respect For America

[From article]
Kerry's belief in himself as the Indispensable Man is touchingly quaint. His conception of the U.S. secretary of state is apparently frozen in a time when it was a position of unparalleled power and respect. Those days are gone.
[. . .]
When Kerry showed up in Cairo to meet with the president of Egypt, he was wanded by the guards, as if he had just wandered in from the airport security line.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0714/lowry072914.php3#.U-snCt0--yM

Jewish World Review

July 29, 2014 / 2 Menachem-Av, 5774
'A hell of a foray'
By Rich Lowry

Open Letter To Kerry, From Israeli Woman

Like many good people, this woman does not consider the possibility of knowledge and evil intent of Kerry on behalf of Obama. Is it cluelessness, or intentional evil that Kerry works for?

[From letter]
There cannot be peace until you recognize your enemy. There cannot be successful negotiations if you fail to understand those you would bring to the table. You fail on both counts.
[. . .]
Unlike the Arab world, Israel is an open society – read our newspapers, speak to the people on the street. No one will stop you and we won’t escort you with secret police to control your experience.
[. . .]
in Arabic, they will talk of a time when there will be no Jews in the entire Middle East, never mind no Jews in the Palestine they envision.
[. . .]
It doesn’t matter to them if they kill a soldier, a man with a gun, a pregnant woman, or a helpless child.
[. . .]
This is your latest blunder, and it is a big one. Israel is laughing at you this morning. Economic sanctions?
They gassed us, beat us, bombed us, burned us. They haunted us, hunted us, hated us through the centuries across many lands and through this land in the last several decades. They burned the synagogue where my grandmother was hiding; they gassed my great grandmother to death.
International isolation? They put us in ghettos, they exploded our buses and shot our babies in the head. They lynched my neighbor, attacked the buses on which my friends travel. They shot my daughter’s teacher (and his infant son) and ambushed and killed a colleague of mind.

http://www.paulasays.com/2014/02/02/open-letter-to-john-kerry/

OPEN LETTER TO JOHN KERRY
FEBRUARY 2, 2014
PAULA R. STERN

What Kerry Did To Anger Israelis, Arabs.

John F. Kerry

[From article]
The talks also undermined Egypt’s cease-fire proposal, which Israel had accepted and Hamas rejected. “Kerry tried through his latest plan to destroy the Egyptian bid,” charged a senior Palestinian official quoted in the Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat — a peace plan that the PA itself had supported.
It gets worse. Kerry did not just trample an Egyptian initiative. It was backed by the entire Arab League and specifically praised by Saudi Arabia. With the exception of Qatar — more a bank than a country — the Arabs are unanimous in wanting to see Hamas weakened, if not overthrown. The cease-fire-in-place they backed would have denied Hamas any reward for starting this war, while what Kerry brought back from Paris granted practically all of its demands.
[. . .]
Why didn’t Kerry just stay home and declare unequivocal U.S. support for the Egyptian/Arab League plan? Instead, he flies off to Paris and sends Jerusalem a package of victories for Hamas: lifting the blockade from Egypt, opening the border with Israel, showering millions of foreign cash to pay the salaries of the 43,000 (!) government workers that the near-insolvent Hamas can not.
[. . .]
Whatever his intent, Kerry legitimized Hamas’ war criminality. Which makes his advocacy of Hamas’ terms not just a strategic blunder — enhancing an American-designated terror group just when a wall-to-wall Arab front wants to see it gone — but a moral disgrace.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/op_ed/2014/08/krauthammer_kerry_s_hamas_talks_a_disgrace

Krauthammer: Kerry’s Hamas talks a disgrace
Sunday, August 3, 2014
By: Charles Krauthammer
Boston Herald

Misguided White House Middle East Policy

[From article]
A case can be made for this “kick the can down the road” approach, as I did last week in discussing Kerry’s recent diplomatic negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and with rival political leaders in Afghanistan. But Gaza has suffered from a generation of brutal expediency. Any deal that reinforces Hamas’s stranglehold — rather than building a path toward change of government, elections and eventual disarmament — is misconceived. In the name of stopping bloodshed this week, it all but guarantees it in the future. That’s why public opinion polls show a strong majority of Gazans back the idea of returning to Palestinian Authority control — because they want an end to the cycle of intermittent warfare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-john-kerrys-big-blunder-in-seeking-an-israel-gaza-cease-fire/2014/07/28/ab3fbfd2-1686-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html

John Kerry’s big blunder in seeking an Israel-Gaza cease-fire
By David Ignatius Opinion writer

July 28, 2014 at 3:16 PM

Washington Post 

When Rich Become Poor; When Poor Become Rich

[From article]
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are worth between $10 and $50 million, according to their financial disclosure forms – but taxpayers will still pony up nearly $1 million this year to fund their post-White House lifestyle.
Like the three other living former presidents, Jimmy Carter and the two George Bushes, Clinton receives a $201,000 annual pension. But that just scratches the surface of the government benefits he shares with his wife Hillary.
The total for 2014 also includes $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills.
In all, The Washington Post first reported, taxpayers are providing Clinton with $944,000 in post-presidential pay and benefits.
That tab was $1.28 million in 2002, the year after he left office, according to a Congressional Research Service report cited by the Post and the Washington Free Beacon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2667949/Taxpayers-spend-944-000-support-multimillionaire-Bill-Clintons-post-presidential-lifestyle-2014.html

Taxpayers will spend $944,000 to support Bill Clinton's lifestyle in 2014 as he claims he and Hillary are not 'out of touch' because they 'talk to people in our town'
Bill Clinton said Tuesday his wife's claim that they were 'dead broke' after his presidency was 'factually true'
He and Hillary are not 'out of touch,' he insisted, because they go to the grocery store and 'talk to people in our town'
An April Congressional Research Service report found that the federal government has spent $15.9 million on Bill Clinton's retirement since 2001
He got $1.28 million in benefits the year after he left office
Clinton said Tuesday that attacking his wife as a wealthy elite in the run-up to the 2016 election is 'the wrong debate'
This year Clinton's costs include a $201,000 pension, $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills
Former president George W. Bush spends even more, costing taxpayers $1.28 million this year and averaging 4 per cent more per year than Clinton
The government inexplicably budgeted $102,000 for Bush's telephone expenses in 2014, and planned to spend $135,000 more on furniture, computers, office supplies and other miscellany
By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 16:08 EST, 24 June 2014 | UPDATED: 17:00 EST, 24 June 2014

* * *

[From article]
There are two sorts of stock human dramas that play out in every age of history. The first concerns people who were once rich but are now discovering they are poor. The second is their opposite; people who were once poor who suddenly realize they are rich.
[. . .]
The problem of course is what happens when the long-rich go broke. The once-rich-now-bankrupt become worse than bust, they become ridiculous. A modern example is John Kerry who is making a beggar’s tour of the Middle East.
[. . .]
Kerry is almost a central-casting perfect picture of a degenerate aristocrat. Just as Chelsea doesn’t do money, neither does Kerry do Foreign Policy. He at least does artistic gestures. Only the other day Kerry made an important announcement. Speaking at a the Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies Pride event at the State Department, he declared “I’m working hard to ensure that by the end of my tenure, we will have lesbian, bisexual and transgender ambassadors in our ranks as well.”
[. . .]
What Old Money and Power finds hardest to accept is that perhaps their scruffy, uncredentialed and coarse opponents might not only be their equals, but their superiors. One is beginning to suspect that the terror masters are better men — not better or more capable men than normal Americans — but better men than the aristocrats.
[. . .]
The men in the White House are like grifters who inherited a great fortune and have unexpectedly come into clothes, cars, houses and jets without the slightest clue how they were earned.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/06/24/our-ruling-class/

Our Ruling Class
June 24th, 2014 - 4:39 pm
By Richard Fernandez

John Kerry Insults Israel

[From article]
John Kerry kicked things off by accusing Israel of heading toward becoming an “apartheid state” just a day after Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Kerry ought to be fired for that. He won’t be, but he ought to be.
Kerry could have taken a look at how some of our Muslim allies behave, if he wants to throw the apartheid word around. Women in Saudi Arabia aren’t even allowed to drive cars. They live in a state of perpetual subjugation

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/04/28/jen-psakis-judgement-is-even-worse-than-you-thought/

Jen Psaki’s Judgement is Even Worse than You Thought
April 28, 2014 - 6:56 am
Bryan Preston

Celebrating Anti Semitism

[From article]
The hip poet Amiri Baraka (aka Everett LeRoi Jones) recently died. He was once poet laureate of New Jersey, held prestigious university posts and was canonized with awards -- despite being a hateful anti-Semite.
After 9/11, Baraka wrote a poem that suggested Israel knew about the plan to attack the World Trade Center. One of his poems from the '60s included this unabashedly anti-Semitic passage: "Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew ... I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured." Yet that did not preclude the New York Times and NPR from praising him after his death.
[. . .]
In politics, Israel often finds itself at the wrong end of a troubling double standard.
[. . .]
Nazis and racists used to spearhead Jewish hatred, based on ancient crackpot defamations that date back to the Jewish diaspora into Europe after the Roman destruction of Judaea.
But lately, anti-Semitism has become more a left-wing pathology. It is driven by the cheap multicultural trashing of the West. Jewish people here and abroad have become convenient targets for those angry with supposedly undeserved Western success and privilege.
[. . .]
Kerry is not rushing into Damascus to stop the bloodletting that has claimed far more lives than all the Palestinians lost in 70 years of conflict with Israel. Syrian President Bashar Assad, Shiite terrorists and al-Qaeda would not listen politely to Kerry's pontificating sermons.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0114/hanson011614.php3#.UuTG2930Czs

Jewish World Review 

Jan. 16, 2014/ 15 Shevat, 5774
The cowardice of the new anti-Semitism
By Victor Davis Hanson

Syria Expert Admits Mistakes

Elizabeth O'Bagy

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/16/embattled-syria-expert-was-never-in-phd-program.html

Exclusive: Embattled Syria Expert Elizabeth O'Bagy Says She Made 'Many Mistakes'
by Josh Rogin
Sep 16, 2013 5:33 PM EDT

John Kerry's Humorous Statements on Syria

John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State: "It was this big!"

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100233562/john-kerrys-top-10-most-embarrassing-statements-on-syria/

John Kerry’s top 10 most embarrassing statements on Syria
By Nile Gardiner World
Last updated: September 4th, 2013

Howie Carr's Love Letter To Sen. Kerry

http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061174640

Please, John Kerry, just go away!
Boston Herald
By Howie Carr
Wednesday, November 14, 2012

John Kerry and Taxes

Lovey, Howie Carr is making fun of me again. He wasn't in Viet Nam, was he Lovey. Why does he get to be on Fox and Friends? Can I get some more fish heads Lovey?

http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1302523

Flip-flopping John Kerry faces a taxingly bitter winter

By Howie Carr
Boston Herald
Sunday, December 12, 2010