Khamenei Demands Further Concessions From Obama

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As the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 nears, Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei declared on Tuesday from Tehran:

"Termination of the sanctions should depend on the fulfillment of Iran's undertakings; they should avoid saying that we should do our undertakings and then the Agency (IAEA) needs to verify them before the sanctions are removed, (because) we absolutely do not accept such a thing.

. . . .

We oppose the condition that fulfillment of the opposite side's undertakings depend on the IAEA (verification) report because the Agency has proved time and again that it is not independent and fair; hence we have a pessimistic view about it."

Khamenei also repeated his opposition to "unconventional inspections, interrogation of Iranian figures and inspection of military centers."

Will Khamenei's last-minute demands wring further concessions from the first invertebrate ever to inhabit the Oval Office? As matters stand now, the proposed agreement will, as explained by Professor Alan J. Kuperman in a New York Times guest op-ed entitled "The Iran Deal’s Fatal Flaw," only lengthen Iran's breakout time from "a little under two months" to three months. However, Obama is desperate, and "No deal is better than a bad deal" is no longer being trumpeted from the White House or the State Department.

Stay tuned . . .

[A comment published in response to Prof. Kuperman's op-ed by the "moderators" of The New York Times:

"'Showering Iran with rewards for making illusory concessions poses grave risks.'

Only to a Zionist is eliminating illegal, petty, vindictive, (Zionist-dictated) sanctions 'showering Iran with rewards.'

More than their racism, it is the mendacity of the Zionists that is so so appalling."

As stated by Dr. Martin Luthor King: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."

Yup, anti-Semitism continues to raise its ugly head at The New York Times.]

James Bamford, "Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal": The New York Times Continues to Wage War Against Israel

So, you're interested in having a guest opinion piece published in The New York Times? Unless you're Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin or Henry Kissinger, it's not an easy thing to do. On the other hand, if you write an opinion piece - no matter how vapid or inane - excoriating Israel, you're chances of being published improve immeasurably.

In a fatuous guest New York Times op-ed entitled "Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal," James Bamford tells us how he "had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden" in Moscow this past summer. And apparently during the time that Bamford "hung out" with this American traitor, he was told that "the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200." Bamford informs us:

"Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. 'I think that’s amazing,' he told me. 'It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.'

It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses. In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used information collected against innocent Palestinians for 'political persecution.' In testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society."

Oh my goodness, the NSA passes communications from Palestinians to Israeli intelligence. Apparently unbeknownst to Bamford, Israel also shares intelligence with the United States. That's what friendly intel agencies do. (Would Bamford have us believe that the US doesn't share such information with the UK's MI6?)

A violation of privacy? No question about it. However, as Bamford is surely aware, every time you make an overseas call, your conversation is recorded. Say a "magic" word, and your conversation gets "special attention." That's the price we pay in order to attempt to avoid another 9/11. Sure, it's a nasty trade-off, but I personally prefer not to see another 2,600 people incinerated in a skyscraper, and I am willing to sacrifice much of my personal privacy to ensure that this does not happen again.

The Mossad and the Shin Bet make use of information concerning sexual orientations, infidelities and money problems to coerce people into becoming collaborators? Tell me, are there espionage organizations which don't do this?

And if Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, is raising money in the US to fund its terror activities, is this of no interest to Israel and the US?

Okay, 43 reservists and former reservists from Unit 8200, from among the thousands of Israelis who have served in this unit, published a letter criticizing Israeli intelligence gathering efforts. Am I supposed to be shocked? Doesn't this speak volumes about the tolerant nature of Israeli society, which allows citizens from a broad spectrum of political views to express their views without fear of imprisonment or corporal punishment? And are we to understand that the thousands of other Israelis who served in Unit 8200 didn't sign the letter because they are stupider than these 43 persons or less moral?

Bamford concludes his opinion piece by observing how Snowden informed him:

"It’s much like how the F.B.I. tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself . . . We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?"

It never occurs to Bamford that unlike Hamas, Martin Luthor King never encouraged suicide bombings, indiscriminately fired thousands of missiles at Israeli population centers, or called for the murder of all Jews.

Only The New York Times would stoop so low as to publish this offensive tripe.

Charles Blow, "50 Years Later": Compare with Kathleen Parker's "Obama’s Race Remarks Exacerbate Tensions"

My goodness gracious, it's time for yet another JG Caesarea Challenge Round!

Read Charles Blow's latest New York Times op-ed entitled "50 Years Later" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/opinion/blow-50-years-later.html?_r=0). As we near the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, marked by Dr. King's world-shaking "I have a dream" speech, Mr. Blow would have us know:

"I’m absolutely convinced that enormous steps have been made in race relations. That’s not debatable. Most laws that explicitly codified discrimination have been stricken from the books. Overt, articulated racial animus has become more socially unacceptable. And diversity has become a cause to be championed in many quarters, even if efforts to achieve it have taken some hits of late.

But my worry is that we have hit a ceiling of sorts. As we get closer to a society where explicit bias is virtually eradicated, we no longer have the stomach to deal with the more sinister issues of implicit biases and of structural and systematic racial inequality.

I worry that centuries of majority privilege and minority disenfranchisement are being overlooked in puddle-deep discussions about race and inequality, personal responsibility and societal inhibitors."

Okay, what's missing from this opinion piece?

First, there's not even a single mention of the fact that America today has a second-term African American president. Insignificant? I don't think so. This is huge.

But there's more . . .

Just over a month ago, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "The Whole System Failed" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/opinion/the-whole-system-failed.html?_r=0), Mr. Blow wrote concerning the George Zimmerman acquittal:

"This case is not about an extraordinary death of an extraordinary person. Unfortunately, in America, people are lost to gun violence every day. Many of them look like Martin and have parents who presumably grieve for them. This case is about extraordinary inequality in the presumption of innocence and the application of justice: why was Martin deemed suspicious and why was his killer allowed to go home?"

Well, in the US there is a presumption of innocence, and "beyond reasonable doubt" remains the standard of evidence required for a criminal conviction. Zimmerman claimed that he was pinned on his back. His nose was broken, and the back of his head was lacerated. Was he acting out of fear, or, was he capable of the "intention" needed for conviction? Was there reasonable doubt?

Again, there is racism in America, and perhaps Zimmerman should never have stopped Martin, but did an "imperfect" American jury system reach the wrong verdict, or did the prosecution fail to meet its immensely difficult burden of proof? Did the prosecution "overreach" when deciding which charges to bring against Zimmerman?

Now have a look at Kathleen Parker's Washington Post opinion piece of today's date entitled "Obama’s race remarks exacerbate tensions" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-obamas-race-remarks-exacerbate-tensions/2013/08/23/7491bb2e-0c1f-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html?hpid=z2). Ms. Parker writes:

"If I had a son, he would look like Christopher Lane, the 22-year-old Australian baseball player shot dead while jogging in Oklahoma.

If I had a father, he’d look like Delbert Belton, the 88-year-old World War II veteran beaten to death in Spokane, Wash.

. . . .

These are all true statements if we identify ourselves and each other only by the color of our skin, which increasingly seems to be the case. Even our president has done so.

Barack Obama helped lead the way when he identified himself with the parents of Trayvon Martin, shot by George Zimmerman in the neighborhood-watch catastrophe with which all are familiar. Stepping out from his usual duties of drawing meaningless red lines in the Syrian sand, the president splashed red paint across the American landscape:

'If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.'

In so saying, he essentially gave permission for all to identify themselves by race with the victim or the accused. How sad, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the march Martin Luther King Jr. led on Washington, that even the president resorts to judging not by the content of one’s character but by the color of his skin — the antithesis of the great dream King articulated."

Query: Where is there any reference to the deaths of Lane and Belton in Mr. Blow's op-ed? Answer: There is none.

"Puddle-deep discussions about race and inequality"? Mr. Blow's op-ed regrettably is little more than this.

Alice Walker: "Why I'm sailing to Gaza": What Color Is Evil?

In a June 21, 2011 "Special to CNN" (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/21/alice.walker.gaza/), Alice Walker, the 67-year-old author of "The Color Purple," seeks to explain why she is participating in the flotilla to Gaza planned for later this month. In a cynical message in which she struggles to interject the names of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman (Schwerner and Goodman were Jews who were murdered in Mississippi when they drove south with Cheney to protest racial discrimination in the U.S. - yes, Walker would have us believe that she's participating in the flotilla in memory of these Jews), Walker writes:

"And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our President's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?

. . . .

As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc., is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid."

So bottom line, we are to understand that Walker will be participating in this flotilla for the benefit of the world's children, including Jewish and Israeli children. Sorry, Alice, but I don't buy it.

Naturally, there is no mention in Walker's piece about the advanced anti-tank missile, which was smuggled into Gaza and fired at a yellow Israeli school bus two months ago, killing one Israeli child.

And what about the some 12,000 mortar shells, rockets and missiles fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets in recent years, many timed for when children in southern Israel traveled to school in the morning? No mention by Walker of how Israeli children living in the proximity of Gaza preferred to wet their beds at night rather than risk leaving a "safe room" in their homes in order to relieve themselves, thus avoiding the need to find shelter within 15 seconds if a rocket was launched.

No mention, either, of the countless Palestinian suicide bombers, who took great efforts to detonate themselves at the entrances to shopping centers, where young women and their children congregated (see, for example: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3179915,00.html).

No discussion, of course, by Walker of Gilad Shalit, who was abducted from Israel into Gaza by Hamas, which over the course of five years has refused to allow the Red Cross or anyone else to see him (see: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=226409).

But wait, there's more. Walker's CNN piece refers us to her blog (http://alicewalkersgarden.com/blog/), where she further describes her experience of waiting on line to enter the West Bank from Jordan and being questioned by an Israeli at the border:

"At some point I said to him, seeing him really as I might have seen my own (misguided) son: Don't you realize this behavior, of making old men, mothers, little children, wait in long lines pleading with you to visit their families is wrong and is bad for you? I couldn't bring myself to use the "N" [Nazi] word, but I did say: Don't you think this behavior - insulting, threatening, humiliating - makes you all seem German-esque? I meant the old German-esque, of the late Thirties and Early Forties, not the current German-esque."

So here we have it again: Walker waited in line (she didn't make use of the lounge), the passport control persons were not nice (sometimes they're not nice to me), and she was questioned at length, and on this basis Israelis are being compared with Nazis, although Walker makes certain not to disparage Germans of today.

I wonder if Walker had ever seen the aftermath of a Palestinian suicide bombing and had been forced to retrieve the limbs of "old men, mothers and little children," whether she would persist in this vein. Afterall, it was Palestinian suicide bombings which resulted in the closure of the border between Israel and Gaza, through which thousands of Palestinians workers once passed each day on their way to jobs in Israel.

But let's examine Walker's Nazi analogy a bit further. In the 1933 German democratic federal elections, the Nazis emerged as the largest party and came to power. In the 2006 democratic elections in Palestine, Hamas, whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews (not just Israelis) and the obliteration of Israel, swept to power in Gaza. No mention of the Hamas charter or even Hamas in Walker's blog entry.

In addition to Jews, whom else did the Nazis persecute? Answer: among others, homosexuals. The attitude of Hamas toward homosexuals? According to Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, who was asked whether homosexual marriage would be permitted in Gaza (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article575744.ece):

"Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?”

Needless to say, there is no mention in Walker's blog item of Palestinian persecution and murder of gays.

And if that is not enough, Walker also doesn't bother to mention how women in Gaza and the West Bank are repeatedly the victims of "honor killings" by male relatives, who have been punished with sentences of six months or less for such atrocities.

I favor a two-state solution to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis along the 1967 lines with land swaps, but I also have no illusions about the intentions of Hamas. And whereas I want the Palestinians to live in dignity and independence in their own land, neither Fatah nor Hamas is prepared to acknowledge the right of tiny Israel (nine miles wide at its waist) to exist within any borders whatsoever.

This upcoming voyage to Gaza by Walker is not about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cheney, Schwerner or Goodman, as Walker would have us believe. Rather, this is about the blind refusal to seek balance and acknowledge evil, which is to be found aplenty in Alice's beloved Gaza.

Anti-Semitism: No Response from Charles Blow

Following my e-mails concerning the vile anti-Semitic readers' comments that were posted by The New York Times in response to Charles Blow's blog post, "Obama and the Jews, Part 2" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/08/charles-blows-obama-and-jews-part-2.html), Blow, Andrew Rosenthal and the Office of the Public Editor of The Times did not respond, and the anti-Semitic readers' comments were not removed. Apparently, anti-Semitism is deemed "not abusive" by the once venerable Gray Lady.

Meanwhile, Charles Blow has published an op-ed entitled "I Had a Nightmare" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/opinion/28blow.html?hp), in which he declares his love for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and denounces Glenn Beck's “Restoring Honor” rally on the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is also one of my heroes, a fearless giant among men, whose legacy will live forever among those who believe in freedom and equality. His death, never properly investigated, still leaves me in anguish.

Dr. King also championed the fight for better understanding among African Americans and Jews and refused to tolerate anti-Semitism.

If Mr. Blow truly cares about Dr. King's legacy, I think it is a pity that he has chosen to ignore the hateful comments that were published in response to his blog post "Obama and the Jews, Part 2".

Mr. Blow concludes his op-ed of today's date, "I Had a Nightmare", by declaring:

"We should use Glenn’s nightmare to reconnect with Martin’s dream."

Fine, but before condemning Glenn Beck's "divisiveness", Mr. Blow has a little mess to clean up at home.