Roger Cohen: "Get Bold, Barack" Or "Get Real, Roger"?

In a New York Times op-ed entited "Get Bold, Barack" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02iht-edcohen.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), Roger Cohen today expresses his disappointment with the president and observes that "the disappointed are not misguided but rational, even scientific." (Apparently, Cohen is always receptive to adulation, even if it need come from himself.) In this same modest vein, Cohen writes with regard to Obama:

"He needs to become serious about balancing the budget. He needs a foreign policy that reflects a changed world not a churlish Congress."

Become serious about balancing the budget? A rational, even scientific Cohen fails to acknowledge that Obama's deficit budget over the past two years has been squandered on the escalation of a senseless ground war in Afghanistan and on bonuses for bankers, instead of being spent on infrastructure, education and jobs for middle class, working families. Instead of fiscal stimulus, we have witnessed an Obamination, which will not be reversed anytime soon.

A foreign policy that reflects a changed world not a churlish Congress? Stop right there! Congress has absolutely nothing to do with Obama's dismal human rights record, involving a refusal to acknowledge human rights abuses in China, Iran, Egypt, Burma, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and a host of other countries. Obama rode into power believing that he could "make nice" to some of the world's most oppressive regimes and wean them from their evil ways. And although Obama has succeeded in alienating long-standing allies such as Poland, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, Britain, India, Japan, Columbia and Israel, his overtures to tyranny have been met with scorn and derision.

Sorry, Roger, but this "bold" foray into foreign affairs is Obama's sole responsibility, although perhaps you should acknowledge your own support for the president's failed attempt at courting Tehran, which necessitated turning a blind eye to murder, torture and horrific abuse of Kurds, Baha'is, Sunni Muslims, homosexuals, women, journalists and political dissidents.

Blame Obama's tolerance of human rights abuses on Congress? No dice! Again, this was quintessential Obama.

Get bold, Barack? Get real, Roger!

Her Hideousness, Catherine Ashton, Receives a "Very Important" Letter from Iran

On Friday, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton announced that the EU had received a letter from Saeed Jalili, the top Iranian nuclear negotiator, saying that Tehran is ready to restart negotiations with the P5+1 world powers over its nuclear program after November "in a place and on a date convenient to both sides." In Brussels at a summit of EU leaders, Ashton stated: "It's a very important development and we're now in touch with Iran to see if we can agree the time and the place which is possible."

If the letter is indeed "very important", why was it sent to Ashton, instead of Obama? Answer: Ashton is a former chairwoman of the Health Authority in Hertfordshire, who has never held elected office and has no experience in foreign affairs. With a BSc degree in sociology, a life-sized Dalek (a fictional race of extraterrestrial mutants from the British science fiction television series "Doctor Who") in her sitting room, and past involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which is suspected of having been funded by the Soviet Union, she is deemed a featherweight by Ahmadinejad and his cohorts.

Further stalling by Tehran as Ahmadinejad links cessation of the Iranian drive for an atomic bomb to exposure of Israeli nuclear capabilities? You can bet on it.

An Honor Killing a Mere Mile Away

Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels wrote:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

And so, when Jimmy Carter wrote a book entitled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", the closet anti-Semites from the Left howled with approval. And when Roger Cohen or the editorial board of The New York Times writes anything concerning Israel, that same canard, "Israeli is apartheid", appears at least a dozen times in the readers' comments posted by the Grey Lady, which lost its moral compass long ago.

So how does someone like myself, from Israel's hoi polloi, disprove this fabrication? Perhaps if Carter and his ilk could accompany me on my journey to the Gan Shmuel Shopping Center, five miles to the east, where I will be buying groceries later this afternoon, they would see things otherwise. At the shopping center they would witness Jewish and Arab shoppers and sales persons mingling freely, no sign whatsoever of segregation or any form of discrimination. But Carter and friends would never join me, enthralled by the big lie and the happiness which it engenders.

Which is not to say that there are no variations of apartheid in Israel. Indeed, there is gender apartheid within certain segments of Israel's Arab community, which exposes its ugly face in the form of "honor killings". This past week, such an honor killing occurred a mere mile away from my home in the Arab village of Jisr a-Zarka:

"The body of a 30-year-old woman from Jisr a-Zarka was found lifeless in her bed by her mother Friday morning. Magen David Adom Sharon crews confirmed the woman's death on arrival.

The body of Tanya Amash was discovered by her mother as she attempted to wake her and noticed she was not breathing and was unconscious. MDA crews initiated a prolonged resuscitation but a doctor ultimately pronounced her death.

According to initial investigations and bruises on the Amash's body, police suspect internal family violence. After investigating the family members, police discovered that the Amash's 22-year-old brother, Anise Amash was last with her.

Police say the brother arrived in the morning and after an argument broke out between him and his sister, a physical altercation ensued in which he allegedly choked the 30-year-old.

Police were searching the area for the suspect after he left the family's home."

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=193246

This was no isolated incident in Israel or the Muslim world. In Israel, honor killings account for the majority of homicides among its Arab citizens. In neighboring Gaza and the West Bank, four women die each month at the hands of male relatives. Throughout the Muslim Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan, thousands of women are murdered each year by their grandfathers, fathers and brothers, and this horrifying practice has recently been exported to the U.S. and Canada (http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/04/honor-killings-in-muslim-world.html).

The response of The New York Times, its columnists, and the Left as a whole to this horrifying practice? Silence. After all, they enjoy too much the intoxication which comes from excoriating Israel and its hateful Jews and the resultant exhilaration deriving from this ancient prejudice.

Roger Cohen: "Captain Crunch Time"

Once again Roger Cohen has breezed into Israel, and in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Crunch Time", embellished with a Jerusalem dateline, he informs us:

"Obama has to look over the horizon and ask Netanyahu this question:

'Mr. Prime Minister, I understand your security concerns. The United States will always stand by Israel. But tell me this: If all your security concerns are met, all of them, what is the border you want for Israel?'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion

The fallacy and fatuity of Cohen's op-ed are to be found in the above premise: Neither the U.S. nor anyone else, except Israel itself, can currently meet Israel's security needs.

Consider Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Notwithstanding UN Resolution 1701, which calls for a permanent ceasefire to be based on the creation of a buffer zone free of armed personnel other than UN and Lebanese Forces, Hezbollah has amassed thousands of Iranian and Syrian rockets and missiles in the region and prevents UNIFIL troops from enforcing the resolution.

Should a Palestinian state immediately be declared, who will prevent Hamas from accumulating weaponry in the West Bank, as it has done in Gaza, and firing an occasional rocket or missile at Ben Gurion Airport, which is five miles away from the border with the Palestinian Authority? Or at Tel Aviv, some ten miles away? Or at western Jerusalem, immediately adjacent to the Palestinian Authority? And when it happens, will the world again call for Israel to respond "proportionately"?

Unfortunately, there are certain problems that are not ripe for solution, and Obama has yet to learn this lesson.

Roger Cohen? Without a knowledge of Hebrew or Arabic and without 30 years covering the scene, he is almost as credible writing from his Jerusalem hotel and citing a mysterious anonymous "Israeli official" as he was declaring that Iran is "not totalitarian" during his recent sojourns in Teheran.

Kristof's "End the War on Pot": Theng U mR Kirtioff

In New Yuk tmes collllum of today dat (http://www.nytimes.com/), oooopth, I mean (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/opinion/28kristof.html?hp)=funnny!-, Nik Kritooff writ to lealize pot. Thang yu kRizoff. U one koool dud! U the man! Ths nexth hith fer u!

I texththise mssage aftur byying my med marwarna and drive. Thnk u mR. Kritof for supprting med maryana. I think you opiniion wll, I thing itwill, Ithink the well. Oophs, I forget wat I wante to say. Funny!!!

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Question for Robert Wright: Is Islamophobia Justifiable Within the Gay Community?

In his New York Times "Opinionator" blog of today's date entitled "Islamophobia and Homophobia" (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/islamophobia-and-homophobia/?hp#preview), Robert Wright compares these two phenomena.

Query for Mr. Wright: Is Islamophobia justifiable within the gay community?

Consider that In Saudi Arabia homosexuality is punishable by public execution.

In Iran homosexuals are publicly hanged, and since 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran has executed some 4,000 gay men.

Homosexuality is also punishable by death in Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen and Gaza. Regarding Gaza, there is currently a legal proceeding in the Israeli courts involving a gay man from Gaza living in Israel, who is fighting deportation back to Gaza, where he faces execution (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2826963.stm).

In Bahrain, Qatar, Algeria and the Maldives, homosexuality is "only" punishable by imprisonment or corporal punishment.

Your answer, Mr. Wright?

[Those readers from Ankara, who were infuriated by my prior blog entry, can indeed be proud that homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey.]

Roger Cohen's Blinkered Guidebook to Turkey

Today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Turkey Steps Out", Roger Cohen writes:

"if I could escort Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers and a few bigoted anti-Muslim Europeans to a single country illustrating how the world has changed, it would be the home of the D-word, Turkey."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I wonder whether Roger, in his new role as tour guide, would take it upon himself to explain the slaughter by Turkey of some 1.5 million Armenians between 1914 and 1918. Would he mention how Obama, as a senator and a presidential candidate, stated, "America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides,” yet as president, earlier this year, asked the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to cancel a vote scheduled on a bill recognizing the Armenian genocide?

Given his thesis that "the world has changed", Roger might claim that the Armenian Genocide is already "ancient history" and let bygones be bygones. Yet there is a fly in this ointment.

Some 20% of Turkey's population consists of Kurds, who, suffering endless oppression, seek autonomy. The life expectancy of Turkey's Kurds is significantly less than that of Palestinians in Gaza, and it is a travesty that Turkey's IHH sent a flotilla purportedly bearing aid for Gaza when Kurds live in abject poverty in eastern Turkey.

As described by Human Rights Watch, past persecution of Turkey's Kurds reached extraordinary levels of savagery, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced persons (some estimates place the number in the millions), who until today have been unable to return to their villages:

"Evacuations were unlawful and violent. Security forces would surround a village using helicopters, armored vehicles, troops, and village guards, and burn stored produce, agricultural equipment, crops, orchards, forests, and livestock. They set fire to houses, often giving the inhabitants no opportunity to retrieve their possessions. During the course of such operations, security forces frequently abused and humiliated villagers, stole their property and cash, and ill-treated or tortured them before herding them onto the roads and away from their former homes. The operations were marked by scores of 'disappearances' and extrajudicial executions. By the mid-1990s, more than 3,000 villages had been virtually wiped from the map, and, according to official figures, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless.

In the intervening decade, Turkey has embarked on a convincing program of human rights reform which has been internationally recognized and welcomed. However, that reform has not yet significantly benefited IDPs in Turkey. Most are in much the same situation as they were a decade ago: still displaced and living in harsh conditions in cities throughout the country."

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/turkey0305/3.htm#_Toc97005223

Turkey, of course, is not alone when it comes to persecuting its Kurdish minority. It is no accident that Turkey's current Middle East outreach program focuses upon Iran and Syria, which are also "full partners" in the oppression of the region's 35 million Kurds and seek to deny the Kurds their independence.

For some six months during 2009 Cohen repeatedly informed us that Iran is "not totalitarian", while devoting a mere sentence to the barbarous oppression of that country's Baha'i minority. Are we now to hear of the wonders of Turkey as Cohen sweeps the cruel persecution of its Kurdish minority under the carpet?