Dear Family & Friends,

I return home tomorrow from my “old country”. I tell people who ask me “but, isn’t Israel dangerous?” that America is too. We have crazy, lone wolfs attacking innocent people here. Remember that these killers are not really ‘lone’ wolfs – in whatever country they rise up to kill either us or “the Other Other”. They are always molded by the society in which they live.

I was glad to see David Bedein defend Michael Oren’s well-earned opinions from his close contact & intimate observance of POTUS…(President Of The United States). Oren is truly brave to expose & reveal the true nature of America’s President in his final months controlling our group’s destinies. I’m sure Oren realistically assessed the potential criticism he’d face for ‘daring’ to criticize “He Who Should Not Be Named” as being in control of our lives (for ill or good).

On that note, I’ll click in my TOC ( Table Of Contents) & say good night.

But, first a warm nod & hug to the “Orange” among us. It’s been 10 years but, you should remember the trauma caused by one of Manny & my favorite heroes who won the Yom Kippur War when he abandoned & evacuated 21 communities from Gush Katif plus 4 from the Shomron, evicting 10,000 Jewish men, women & children – destroying their lovingly built homes, schools, businesses, stores and especially our synagogues – where our brave pioneers had created a self-sufficient community life & unique agricultural technique to grow without bugs. Even after 10 years there are those among the destroyed families who have still not established new lives. They chose the Orange of the sunset into the Mediterranean Sea as their color & we followed suit. We wore Orange bracelets: “Jews Shall Not Evict Jews!” We still wear them.

Arik Sharon was our hero until he demolished Gush Katif. Then we took his pictures off our walls. He was our inspiration to make Aliyah but, sometimes very great men make the most great, egregious mistakes. Was his 8 year stroke-paralysis-coma a punishment from HaShem for what he did to our people? It should certainly be a stringent ‘cautionary tale’ for us all NOT to make the same mistakes again & again…..

We are officially now in summer. Yes, it is hot here also.

Have a great day, night, week (Shavua Tov!) month.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Michael Oren, Profile in Courage by David Bedein

3.With the 10-year anniversary of that withdrawal approaching, Natan Sharansky talks about why Sharon went ahead with the move.

4.Netanyahu: Expose the truth on Gaza Flotilla

5.ARLENE KUSHNER “The Ups and Downs”

6.If He Only Had a Heart by John Podhoretz

7.The cost of ongoing incitement by Dr. Edy Cohen

8.Punitive measures imposed on Palestinians after spate of attacks

1.Michael Oren, Profile in Courage by David Bedein

Oren’s revelations were not cheap shots to promote his new book. They were evidence of his integrity. Published: Monday, June 22, 2015 12:18 PM

David Bedein, is director of the Israel Resource News Agency & The Center for Near East Policy Research. His website is www.israelbehindthenews.com.

I have been a vocal critic of Michael Oren, recently elected to the Israeli Knesset. I did not view Michael Oren as a man of principle.

Well, I was proven to be wrong.

Attending at a speech that Oren gave last week, man of deep principle sat on the podium, speaking from the heart, speaking with pain about a subject that his body language told me that he really did not want to discuss, yet felt that he had to deliver Oren could have acted according to the diplomatic codes that all emissaries live by – to maintain the protocol that you not report what you see and hear with your eyes and ears.
However, Michael Oren witnessed a US President turn his back on Israel and could not remain silent.

After all, how many people spend quality time with a sitting US President?

How many people witnessed Obama turn down the request of Jonathan Pollard to visit with his father on his death bed?

How many people witnessed the President of the United States refuse the request of Jonathan Pollard to attend his father’s funeral?

As Abbas joined forces with Hamas, Michael Oren witnessed the unkindest cut of all, the ultimate moral equivalence in American foreign policy, when Obama did not seem to care that any Palestinian state would work towards a “two stage” solution, not a “two state” solution.

Oren’s revelations were not cheap shots to promote his new book.

Michael Oren earned the enmity of the Israel military industrial complex tied to contracts with the US defense establishment, where the watchword is never to say a discouraging word about the highest power echelons of US-Israeli relations.

Michael Oren also earned the enmity of the American Jewish establishment, which, for 60 years, since the age of US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, has buckled under rather than asserted any real challenge to a sitting US President.

Same goes for the Israeli political establishment, where Michael Oren was denounced by leading politicians from both sides of the political spectrum in the Israeli Knesset Parliament. Now we know why Michael Oren was denied a position in the new Israeli government.

Yet there is a deeper reason for Michael Oren’s principled stand.

Although he renounced his US citizenship to become Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren is a devoted scholar of American history, and knows well that the fabric of America was woven by those who stood their ground for principle, no matter what price they would have to pay.

It was a young Senator John F. Kennedy who inspired a generation of Americans in the 1950’s and 1960’s when he penned Profiles in Courage, a book and film series which chronicled American politicians who spoke their conscience and paid for it with their careers.

Michael Oren has unwittingly written a new chapter in Profiles in Courage.

The picture of Michael Oren & President Obama is reminiscent of Mordecai’s

encouragement of Queen Esther, when he tells her, “Who knows if it is but for this that you have come into the palace of the King?”

Michael Oren, Profile in Courage by David Bedein

2.Why Did a Major US Jewish Leader Criticize Israel as He Left Office?

Why does one of America’s foremost Jewish leaders choose to attack Israel rather than take a picture at the Western Wall or make a solidarity visit to France’s Jews? Published: June 22, 2015  Ronn Torossian, is CEO of 5WPR, 1 of the 25 largest PR Agencies in the US.

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is retiring from the organization in July after many years at the helm – and for some reason, he chose to condemn the State of Israel on three separate occasions in his last few days of running the organization. This master of Public Relations criticized Israel on different issues in three separate forums – in an op-ed, in a speech and via press release.

It is true that Foxman undermined the Prime Minister of Israel a few months ago when he urged Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel his speech to a joint session of Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat, and that he has stated that those who oppose a two-state solution encourage anti-Semitism, boycotts against Israel, and are bad for Israel. Foxman has long spoken out on liberal issues.

This week, Foxman wrote an op-ed that criticized Culture Miri Regev for her decision to refuse to fund programs which harm the State of Israel. Foxman argued that “fierce arguments ensued about when free speech crosses the line into something more dangerous, about the difference between speech that comes from independent institutions or individuals and speech that is funded by government, and about what constitutes the public interest in discussing the curtailment of speech.” He is wrong – leaders have the obligation to make decisions and to lead.

Foxman then claimed that the minister of culture should not be able to decide what to fund, writing of Regev, “While it is true that she became minister of culture because her Likud Party formed the government, this line of approach is a grave misunderstanding of democratic society and values, and potentially holds within it future threats to democracy.”

Wrong again. Winners win and losers lose. The Likud Party was chosen in a democratic election to lead the State of Israel. And the left closed the Arutz Sheva radio station on a pretext.

Last week, during a presentation at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, Foxman blamed Israel for losing American Jewish support, claiming “I don’t think Israel understands, appreciates, values, respects this partner– this side of the partner[ship]… There needs to be a lot more sensitivity and education in Israel as to the value of this community besides sending checks or in a moment of crisis, running to Congress.”

Foxman continued, “Where is [Israel’s] sekhel (intelligence, ed.)? Where is the smartness? Where is it to understand that you need to change that relationship, you need to find ways– and it’s not happening! It’s not happening!”

For the tri-fecta, on a hot summer Sunday evening June, Foxman issued a press release condemning Michael Oren, Israel’s former Ambassador to the U.S., claiming Oren’s criticism of President Obama is “unjustified and insensitive.”

Someone should have suggested to Foxman, that after 30 years of running the ADL, he might wish to close his career with a solidarity trip to Israel, or perhaps a gesture to Jews in Europe who are facing a barrage of anti-Semitism.

It is sad that a high-profile Jewish leader chose instead to attack the State of Israel. At this time, that is not what Jewish leaders should be doing. It is certainly not what the head of ADL should leave as his legacy.

Why Did a Major US Jewish Leader Criticize Israel as He Left Office?

3.With the 10-year anniversary of that withdrawal approaching, Natan Sharansky talks about why Sharon went ahead with the move.

Natan Sharansky in talks merging his Yisrael B’Aliyah party with the Likud of then prime minister, the late Ariel Sharon, in 2003.. (photo credit:GILI COHEN MAGEN/REUTERS)

On September 15, 2005, exactly a month after the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon lumbered through the corridors of the United Nations as if he was taking a victory lap. Presidents, prime ministers and princes all wanted to meet him, to slap his back, shake his hand.
It was an astounding reversal for a man so long demonized around the world, and – to a lesser extent – in certain circles in Israel as well.
Sharon the super-hawk, Sharon the settlement- builder, Sharon the bulldozer had bulldozed down the settlements in Gaza, and forcibly evacuated all the Jews there. At the UN, the world stood and applauded.
Ten years later, Natan Sharansky – now head of the Jewish Agency, but at the time a recently-resigned minister from Sharon’s cabinet – said that applause, that acceptance, that legitimacy was undoubtedly a factor in Sharon’s decision to do what Sharansky still finds inexplicable: unilaterally pull out of Gaza.
Sharansky was the diaspora affairs and Jerusalem minister in Sharon’s government, and resigned from the cabinet over the disengagement plan on May 2, 2005, a few months before the August 15 withdrawal.
He handed Sharon a letter spelling out the reasons for his resignation, saying the plan “is a tragic mistake that will exacerbate the conflict with the Palestinians, increase terrorism, and dim the prospects of forging a genuine peace.”
Sharansky wrote that “the guiding principle behind the disengagement plan is based on the illusion that by leaving Gaza we will leave the problems of Gaza behind us,” he wrote.
“As the familiar mantra goes, ‘We will be here and they will be there.’ Once again, we are repeating the mistakes of the past by not understanding that the key to building a stable and lasting peace with our Palestinian neighbors lies in encouraging and supporting their efforts to build a democratic society. Obviously, these changes surely will take time, but Israel is not even linking this departure from Gaza upon the initiation of the first steps in this direction.”
Leave Gaza without gradually setting into place institutions that would ensure democracy was a recipe for disaster, Sharansky argued then, fruitlessly.
That argument rested on a diplomatic plan he presented to Sharon three years earlier, in May 2002, based on the idea of linking a peace process to the expansion of freedom in Palestinian society.
Peace, he argued then and still believes today, will not come until there is democracy in the Palestinian areas – something that will take time, money and energy to develop.
His diplomatic proposal, which he said could be dusted off and considered today, called for the establishment of an interim Palestinian administration, which would be selected from a coordinating body headed by the US, including representatives from Arab countries that recognize Israel.
The interim administration would run the territories under Palestinian control for a transition period of about three years, during which time democratic and civil institutions would be developed; freedom of speech and press guaranteed, as well as the right of free political, social and religious organization; and the educational curriculum glorifying terrorism would be replaced with one sanctifying peace. The refugee camps would be dismantled, and proper housing for the residents built.
During this period, Israel would retain overall security control. Three years later a free election would be held, and Israel would then hold peace talks with the elected representatives.
The theme underpinning the plan is that peace with a dictatorial regime – at that time led by Yasser Arafat – would never work, and that for real peace, there had to be a real Palestinian democracy.
“Our problem is that we don’t have common interests with nondemocratic leaders on the other side,” Sharansky explained. “Arafat’s interest as a dictator was how to control his people, and how to have us as an external enemy. That is why he was not interested in any concessions we gave to him if it diminished his control over his people.”
The moment a government is elected on the basis of wanting what is good for the society, of improving lives, not political control, then the logjam can be relieved, he asserted.
SHARANSKY BELIEVED this then, as he believes it now, and tried to convince Sharon. He failed, and Sharon paid no interest in the democratic institutions that did or did not exist in the Gaza Strip that he left.
“It is a riddle for me until today why exactly Sharon did this,” Sharansky said this week during an interview in his office at the Jewish Agency.
“I had a meeting with him two days before I wrote that letter [of resignation], and told him what I was going to do. I said I really didn’t understand [what he was doing].
“He told me that the world is against us,” Sharansky recalled. “He said there was the Geneva Initiative [a plan drawn up by previous Israeli and Palestinian negotiators that Sharon opposed], and it was only a matter of time before the UN would pass a resolution against us and things would only get worse and worse.”
Once Israel left Gaza, Sharansky quoted Sharon as saying, “it will be clear, and I quote him, ‘We will be here, they will be there. If they shoot one missile at us, we will destroy them, and at least for 10 years – I am not naïve, I can’t say forever – but at least for 10 years if they fire one shot we can do whatever we want because it is a border, a clear border.
“‘We are not there, it is all theirs, they can do whatever they want. We know how to fight. We will destroy everything there, and the world will be with us. I can’t promise forever, but for 10 years I guarantee that they will be with us’.” Sharansky quoted Sharon as saying.
Sharansky, who said he had a very good relationship with Sharon, remembered replying to Sharon: “You will not have 10 days, let alone 10 years.”
“I couldn’t believe then, and I don’t believe now, that he believed what he was saying,” Sharansky added. “Maybe he believed that we could slam them, but I didn’t believe he really thought the world would be with us.”
Sharansky, who developed a close relationship with then-US president George W. Bush, largely because of a book he wrote entitled The Case for Democracy, which Bush not only liked but often quoted and recommended, wrote the president a letter explaining his decision to resign.
In a handwritten letter to Sharansky, Bush wrote back that he shared with Sharansky the vision of “peace through democracy.”
“Democracy is the way forward and that is our goal as we head down the road,” Bush wrote. “I have told all our folks that this process is like that of a child: crawl, stand, walk, run, sprint. We are crawling toward peace and must establish the institutions of democracy in Gaza before we can stand and walk.”
To this day Sharansky is incredulous as to why Sharon left Gaza without insisting that these institutions of democracy be put in place.
In a private conversation later with Bush, Sharansky recalled the president telling him regarding concerns and doubts about the Gaza withdrawal, “I have to rely on General Sharon.”
SHARANSKY SAID THAT as diaspora affairs minister at the time, he was in charge of fighting anti-Semitism, and often pointed out in the cabinet the problems Israel was facing on campuses abroad.
“After all my visits to campuses I would bring [anti-Israel] material to the cabinet. No one was interested but Arik,” he said of Sharon, using his nickname. “He took the material home. There were many pictures of him, with swastikas on his face.”

Hatred toward Israel came out as hatred toward Arik.
I saw how much he laughed, but he took it all home to study.
“He took it very seriously,” Sharansky continued.
“I saw that it was hard for him that he was so hated. I would always tell him, jokingly, ‘Arik, you have to be proud – this is an area where you have no competitor, not Benjamin Netanyahu, not Shimon Peres, no one can compete with you regarding being the target of the hatred of the haters of Israel.’” Sharon laughed it off, Sharansky said, but “I think that because he was so illegitimate, that influenced him. I think he wanted to change that. The disengagement changed the treatment of him, though not for a long time. He no longer appeared in all those hatred-filled cartoons.”
Talk of Sharon’s desire for legitimacy led the conversation with Sharansky to how Sharon was treated at the time by the Israeli press.
In February 2005, Channel 2 commentator Amnon Abramovich said candidly at a press conference at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem that “we have to protect Sharon like an etrog,” referring to the padding that protects the citrus fruit taken by the Jews on Sukkot as one of the four species.
“Protect him in a sealed box, padded with gauze, cotton and plastic wrap, at least until the end of the disengagement,” Abramovich said as numerous corruption scandals began touching on Sharon and his family, triggering concern by some that this could derail the whole disengagement plan.
Sharansky said he brought this up with David Landau, the late journalist who was editor-in-chief of Ha’aretz during this period and who later wrote a book on Sharon and came to talk to Sharansky about him. Landau was quoted as defending the etrog policy in dealing with corruption allegations involving officials like Sharon or former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
“I said to him, ‘tell me, are you not ashamed, and don’t you think you have a great contribution to all the corruption in Israel,” Sharansky said he told Landau for commenting that politicians going in a certain diplomatic direction should be coddled.
Landau, according to Sharansky, defended his position.
“‘Do you know what a state’s witness is?’ he asked me,” Sharansky said. “‘It is someone who if he helps the state get rid of a more serious crime, then they forgive him of lesser crimes. I say the same thing to Olmert – if you help us free ourselves from the biggest crime we have, the occupation, then I will be willing to forgive a lot.’” Sharansky characterized this way of thinking as “horrible,” but said it was important to understand in seeking to explain the culture of corruption that has developed in this country.
AGAINST THE BACKGROUND of seeing Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza as having to do with a desire to gain legitimacy and favor in the eyes of the world and critics at home, Sharansky – who acknowledged he has his criticism of Netanyahu – said he “has to give a great deal of credit to Bibi that he doesn’t do these things.”
Today, Netanyahu has replaced Sharon as the Israeli everyone loves to hate. Today, it is his face on photographs that is painted over with swastikas, and his visage starring in cartoons of Israelis drinking the blood of innocent Palestinians. Today, he is the one disparaged regularly in the op-ed pages of the world’s elite media.
Netanyahu could easily turn that tide by dropping his fierce opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, or by taking some dramatic initiative with the Palestinians, as Sharon did.
“He could easily now get the support of the New York Times,” Sharansky said, “Tom Friedman would be glad to praise Netanyahu if he would come down off the tree. But he doesn’t, because he believes it.
“Though the image of Arik was the one it was impossible to move, and that Bibi moves from place to place, Arik is the one who made the big move. Bibi is consistent.”
A week before Sharon took his victory lap at the UN in September 2005, Netanyahu, then his chief political rival, sarcastically noted – playing on the Hebrew phrase for trading land for peace (shtachim tmurat shalom) – that Sharon traded land for red carpets (shtahim tmurat shtihim).
Sharansky said Netanyahu could now do the same. In his telling, and as one who witnessed up-close Sharon’s decision to take a step that would overnight transform his image, it is to Netanyahu’s credit that he has not been so tempted.

by Israel Hayom Staff

“They send flotillas to Gaza, they don’t send flotillas to Syria. It’s amazing, this travesty of justice, this violation of truth,” says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu • Joint Arab List MK Basel Ghattas plans to sail from Greece with Gaza-bound flotilla.

The Marianne of Gothenburg, which left Sweden as part of Freedom Flotilla III and is about to set sail for Gaza from Athens

Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (Joint Arab List), who made waves when she took part in a flotilla to Gaza in 2010, is no longer alone on deck. Fellow Joint Arab List MK Basel Ghattas is planning to be on board another pro-Palestinian flotilla set to sail soon to the Gaza Strip from Greece. The organizers claim the flotilla is intended to supply humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Ghattas, who is already in Greece, sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon a letter on Sunday in which he made clear his intention to be on the ship Marianne of Gothenburg, which originally set out from Sweden and is due to leave Athens as part of Freedom Flotilla III.
“There is no reason to stop us from reaching Gaza and providing the aid we are bringing,” Ghattas wrote.

“I call upon you to instruct Israeli security forces to stay away from the flotilla and let us continue. Raiding the ships and stopping them from reaching their destination will involve Israel in another difficult international crisis, for which you and your government will bear responsibility.”

On Monday, Netanyahu referred publicly to the flotilla for the first time, saying in a speech to the Jewish Agency Assembly in Tel Aviv, “They send flotillas to Gaza, they don’t send flotillas to Syria. It’s amazing, this travesty of justice, this violation of the truth, the rape of truth.

“Now what are we to do in the face of such slander? In previous times, it was said, ‘Don’t rock the boat.’ I say, ‘Rock the boat.’ Don’t accept it. Speak up, speak back, expose the lies, because that’s the other thing that we learned. It’s not merely to resist the physical attacks on us, it’s to resist the slander that precedes the attacks.”

The Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that it was acting via diplomatic channels to prevent the flotilla from reaching Israel’s territorial waters. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said, “An Israeli Arab MK joining those who seek to wage war on Israel shows that [he] is working in the service of the enemy under the cover of parliamentary immunity.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett said, “Ten years after the disengagement [from Gaza], rockets are being fired at our children from Gush Katif, tunnels leading to our communities are being dug from Gaza, and flotillas of terror are sailing for our shores from Turkey. We evacuated Jews and got flotillas.”

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman called Ghattas’ planned participation in the flotilla “more proof that the Joint Arab List is one big terror ship that exists only to attack Israel and use Israeli democracy to try and destroy it.”

The Zionist Union said in a statement, “Just as the flotilla to Gaza is not humanitarian, but rather a political act that would grant legitimacy to the Hamas regime and increase terrorism against Israel, MK Basel Ghattas’ joining [the flotilla] is regrettable — neither humanitarian nor political — and will merely increase discord within Israel.”

Yesh Atid MK Haim Jelin said that “in the countries he [Ghattas] is helping, including the Gaza Strip, they would hang him in the square for an act like this.”

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said, “The IDF is working day and night to protect Israel’s maritime borders and is constantly keeping tabs on all threats.”

5.ARLENE KUSHNER “The Ups and Downs” June 18, 2015

Lots of “downs,” for sure, but we have to also seek out the “ups” wherever we can find them.

American-born Michael Oren – historian, immediate past Israeli ambassador to the US, newly elected MK in the Kulanu party, – has surprised me, and a whole lot of other people as well. He was always a very middle of the road, “two-state” advocate, and someone who has seemed to be an “establishment” type. I would not – could not! – have predicted the critique of Obama he has now produced.

Credit: Bloomberg

Oren has written a book – Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide , which will be released June 23 – and a major article in the WSJ, in which he discusses Obama’s attitude towards Israel with startling candidness.

John Podhoretz wrote about the book thus (emphasis added):

“It’s an ultimate insider’s story told while all the players save Oren are still in place… “It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in ‘Ally’ that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state…

“On major matters, the administration seemed to hold Israel accountable for problems it had nothing to do with…

“Oren also writes about bizarrely petty offenses. In 2010, Obama left Israel off a list of countries he mentioned as having helped in the wake of the Haiti earthquake when it was the first nation in the world to dispatch relief teams and get them to the disaster sites — because the president was angry about something having to do with the peace process…”

http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/a-new-inside-account-of-obamas-israel-ire/

In his Wall Street Journal piece, written this week, Oren writes (emphasis added):

“’Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.’ When I was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.

“I never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them deliberately…

“From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran. Such policies would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader. But Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.

“The first principle was ‘no daylight’…immediately after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel and America.

“’When there is no daylight,’ the president told American Jewish leaders in 2009, ‘Israel just sits on the sidelines and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs’…

“The other core principle was ‘no surprises’…

“Israeli leaders typically received advance copies of major American policy statements on the Middle East and could submit their comments. But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel.

“Similarly, in May 2011, the president altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines with land swaps—formerly the Palestinian position—as the basis for peace-making. If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture the president the following day, it was because he had been assured by the White House, through me, that no such change would happen.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-obama-abandoned-israel-1434409772

Obama’s inherent hostility towards Israel will come as news to very few of us. It is a very “down” side of what we must contend with today.

The “up” aspect is Oren’s willingness to catalogue his experience publicly, and point an appropriate finger. More routinely, there is an inclination to diplomatically paper-over problems between nations, especially nations that are supposed to be the closest of allies. One can only guess at the level of distress and frustration Oren coped with during the years he served as ambassador.

What is more, I see it as part of the “up” side that Prime Minister Netanyahu is refusing to comment or criticize Oren or apologize on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu has had to swallow a whole lot of fury with regard to Obama’s treatment over the years. Surely, he must feel vindicated at some level now, although he cannot give overt expression to this vindication. Let us hope he continues to stand strong.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196943#.VYQWg5sVjIV

It goes without saying that the response of the Obama administration to Oren’s revelations has been angry and indignant. That angry indignation was expressed here in Israel by US Ambassador Dan Shapiro, who has been pressuring Netanyahu to apologize. All the more credit to Bibi that he is not responding to this pressure.

The one who did back down is Moshe Kahlon, head of the Kulanu party, to which Oren belongs. He says that Oren does not speak for his party.

According to the article I cite above, Gilad Erdan, Minister of Internal Security, has written something criticizing Oren, as well. That disappointed me.

An item of importance to mention here, and a real downer:

Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP

A famous Catholic church – the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish – in Tagbah, near the Kinneret, suffered a serious fire on Thursday. Arson is being assumed because of the nature of the fire, and an investigation is in process.

I want first to condemn this act of arson in the strongest terms. This is not only wrong morally in and of itself; it tears the fabric of Israeli society and damages the name of Israel – which prides herself on being a place where there is freedom of worship for all. I would like my Christian readers especially to know how abhorrent Israelis find this behavior.

Netanyahu said: “There is no room for hate or intolerance in our society.”

Chief Rabbi David Lau declared that the attack “contradicts Jewish values and human morality.”

At the same time, I caution just a bit of patience, as the investigation proceeds. Perhaps, as is being charged in some quarters, ultra-religious young Jews are responsible for this. But we do not know this yet. I have memories of other times that the assumption was made, in the face of religious desecration of one sort or another, that it was Jews who did it – when it later turned out that others were responsible but had attempted to make it appear that it was an act of Jewish extremists.

A group of young Jews was questioned, but then released quickly because there was no evidence that they were involved Fervently I hope it was not Jews who did this, but I am prepared to accept the verdict that it was, if that is what is determined in the end, and to fully condemn those responsible.

What everyone needs to know is that the investigation will be serious.

Time grows short, and so I simply say, Shabbat Shalom.

© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution. If it is reproduced and emphasis is added, the fact that it has been added must be noted.[Gail says: The “yellow” highlighting is my emphasis added.]

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner18@gmail.com

6.If He Only Had a Heart by John Podhoretz Commentary Magazine June, 2015

I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book quite as eye-opening as Michael Oren’s Ally, the bestselling historian’s stunning new memoir of his four years as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. For what Oren has written is an account of serving as a diplomat during a Cold War—the Cold War the Obama administration launched against Israel upon coming into office.

It turns out that, as bad as things looked between the Obamans and the Israelis from the outside, it was even worse on the inside. The sheer unfriendliness of the administration is startlingly present on nearly every one of his memoir’s 374 pages of text—and runs far deeper than the problematic relationship between the president and Oren’s boss, Benjamin Netanyahu. Oren’s first meeting at the State Department with then–Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg sets the tone: “He was a dedicated angler renowned for tying flies in his spare time. Fittingly, Steinberg’s attitude toward the Jewish state called to mind the old Israeli adage, ‘He loves us like a fisherman loves fish.’”

Oren is later verbally abused, and irrationally so, by another State Department official, Tom Nides, when Palestinian efforts to seek recognition of UN statehood threaten to trigger long-standing legislation passed by Congress to shut down Palestinian diplomatic and economic relations with the United States. “You don’t want the f—king UN to collapse because of your f—king conflict with the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f—king Palestinian Authority to fall apart either,” Nides rages at Oren.

Even the administration’s gestures of affection or acts of support were often loaded. Oren uses the Hebrew word for hug, chibbuk, to describe cynical efforts to “keep us close” and restrain Israeli freedom of action: “American contributions to the IDF’s missile defense, for example, diminished Israel’s case for striking Iranian nuclear plants preemptively, and generated more time for talks.”

His dealings with the elite media were likewise unpleasant. He called the New York Times editorial-page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, after the paper published an op-ed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which Abbas effectively suggested the Arabs had accepted the UN Partition Plan of 1947. The conversation went thus:

“When I write for the Times, fact checkers examine every word I write,” I began. “Did anybody check that Abbas has his facts exactly backward?”

“That’s your opinion,” Rosenthal replied.

“I’m an historian, Andy, and there are opinions and there are facts.

That the Arabs rejected partition and the Jews accepted it is an irrefutable fact.”

“In your view.”

“Tell me, on June 6, 1944, did Allied forces land or did they not land on Normandy Beach?”

Rosenthal…replied, “Some might say so.”

There are elements of Ally I found discomfiting—especially his frequent protestations about how much certain politicians and media types with whom he developed friendly personal relations care about Israel when they display no such care or concern in their public words or actions. (And I seriously doubt that the actor–director Ben Affleck has “a statesman’s knowledge of the Middle East, which he studied in college.”) Still, Ally makes it nerve-jangingly clear just how difficult a job it has been for anyone to serve as a guardian of the special relationship between Israel and the United States with a president and a team who are either by default or by ideology effectively hostile toward the Jewish state itself—or the very idea of a Jewish state.

Oren recounts how he himself fell for the Obama Romance in 2008. But this was before he understood the deep and profound coldness within Barack Obama, “a chill” that “distanced him from traditional American allies—not only Israel—whose ambassadors complained to me of the administration’s unprecedented aloofness. ‘Obama’s problem is not a tin ear,’ one of my European colleagues lamented, ‘it’s a tin heart.’”

But it is not his tin heart that has led Obama to engage in this Cold War with Israel. It is his tinpot ideology.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/if-he-only-had-a-heart/

If He Only Had a Heart by John Podhoretz