President commemorates Jewish American heritage

May 30, 2012 2 Comments

President Obama at ‪Jewish‬ American Heritage Month reception

President Obama at ‪Jewish‬ American Heritage Month reception – Photo by William Daroff

By Jennifer Packer, Political Analyst

Washington, May 30 — President Obama paid tribute Wednesday to the accomplishments of American Jews and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Israel.

“We have to stand alongside our friends who share our commitment to freedom and democracy and universal rights. And that includes, of course, our unwavering commitment to the state of Israel and its security and the pursuit of a just and lasting peace,” Obama said during a White House reception commemorating Jewish American Heritage Month. “It’s no secret that we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Obama also told a story of early anti-Semitism in the United States under General Ulysses Grant who issued an order that would have expelled Jews “as a class” from his war zone, the military department of Tennessee, in December 1862.

“It was wrong,” he said. “Even if it was 1862, even if official acts of anti-Semitism were all too common around the world, it was wrong and indicative of an ugly strain of thought.”

Jewish Americans lobbied President Lincoln to oppose Grant’s “General Order.” Lincoln revoked the order and Grant later, as president, apologized.

“Like so many groups, Jews have had to fight for their piece of the American dream. But this country holds a special promise: that if we stand up for the traditions we believe in and in the values we share, then our wrongs can be made right; our union can be made more perfect and our world can be repaired,” Obama said.

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VP hopeful Rob Portman to meet with Netanyahu

May 30, 2012 2 Comments

By Lauren Appelbaum, Political Director

Washington, May 30 – ABC News has confirmed, via an Israeli official, that Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday in Israel.

Portman is in Israel with a bipartisan delegation of legislators in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. However, the meeting with Netanyahu, who has close ties to many Republican lawmakers, is a solo affair for Portman.

Portman is considered to be on a shortlist of potential vice presidential candidates for Mitt Romney’s ticket.

Unlike other politicians rumored to be among the top-tier candidates of potential running-mates who have recently visited Israel, Portman has international experience. He served as U.S. Trade Representative under George H.W. Bush and is currently on the Senate Armed Services Committee. As a member of the Senate, he has traveled to Afghanistan, South Korea and India.

The Israeli official said Netanyahu was unaware of Portman’s possible VP status and makes every effort to meet visiting American politicians.

Portman last traveled to Israel in January 2010 as a private citizen.

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Romney calls for more assertive measures to end Assad regime

May 29, 2012 Leave a comment

By Lauren Appelbaum, Political Director

Washington, May 29 – After the international community blamed the Assad regime in Syria for killing 108 civilians in Houla,  many nations expelled the Syrian ambassadors to their countries. The United Nations said that many of the victims, who included 49 children and 34 women, were summarily executed. The Syrian government continues to maintain that “terrorists” were behind the massacre.

Today, Mitt Romney released a statement on the expulsion of Syrian diplomats by nations around the world:

I welcome the expulsion of Syrian diplomats by the United States and other partner nations. But it only underscores the need for more assertive measures to end the Assad regime. President Obama’s lack of leadership has resulted in a policy of paralysis that has watched Assad slaughter 10,000 individuals. We should increase pressure on Russia to cease selling arms to the Syrian government and to end its obstruction at the United Nations. And we should work with partners to arm the opposition so they can defend themselves.

Gruesome images of bloodied corpses streamed out of Syria Saturday, triggering worldwide condemnation and highlighting the failure of a six-week-old United Nations ceasefire plan to stop the government’s killings that have left 11,000 people dead, according to opposition groups.

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U.S. leaders respond to Syria massacre, worst violence since U.N. ceasefire started

May 27, 2012 1 Comment

By Lauren Appelbaum, Political Director

Washington, May 27 – More than 109 people, including dozens of children, were massacred Friday in Houla, a rebel-held Sunni village near the troubled city of Homs in Syria. Today the Syrian government has accused “terrorist” rebels of the massacre, which is among the worst carnage in the 14-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that has cost about 10,000 lives.

World leaders expressed shock.

“We are horrified by credible reports of targeting killing, including stabbing and ax attacks on women and children in Houla. These acts serve as a vile testament to an illegitimate regime that responds to peaceful political protest with unspeakable and inhuman brutality,” U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said today.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that those who carried out the killings be held to account.

“The United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end,” she said. “We stand in solidarity with the Syrian people and the peaceful marchers in cities across Syria who have taken to the streets to denounce the massacre.”

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney issued a statement today calling on the U.S. to “lead and put an end to the Assad regime:”

“The Assad regime’s massacre of civilians in Haoula—many of them young children—is horrific. After nearly a year and a half of slaughter, it is far past time for the United States to begin to lead and put an end to the Assad regime. President Obama can no longer ignore calls from congressional leaders in both parties to take more assertive steps. The Annan ‘peace’ plan—which President Obama still supports—has merely granted the Assad regime more time to execute its military onslaught. The United States should work with partners to organize and arm Syrian opposition groups so they can defend themselves. The bloodshed in Haoula makes clear that our goal must be a new Syrian government, one that contributes to peace and stability in the Middle East and that truly represents the brave Syrian people.”

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A “Barack O’Romney” State Department is at hand, says one scholar

May 24, 2012 Leave a comment

Aaron David Miller

Aaron David Miller

By Ari Bildner, Staff Writer

Washington, May 24 – How different would a second-term Obama State Department look from a Romney version?

A thought-provoking front-page Foreign Policy article today by veteran Middle East watcher and negotiator Aaron David Miller says the Republican’s foreign policy vision is, contrary to conventional wisdom, almost identical to Obama’s – except when it comes to Israel.

“Despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney would be quite comfortable carrying out President Obama’s foreign policy because it accords so closely with his own,” Miller writes.

His reasoning: a post 9/11 harmony of views, partly borne out of the successes and failures of the Bush administration, has emerged to align foreign policy priorities in four key areas including fixing domestic problems to strengthen America’s international reach and the need to take preemptive action against terrorist threats.

“A post Sept. 11 consensus is emerging that has bridged the ideological divide of the Bush 43 years,” Miller writes. “And it’s going to be pretty durable.”

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Congress parses Palestinian refugee status

May 24, 2012 3 Comments

By Ari Bildner, Staff Writer

Washington, May 24 – As U.S. Senate committee approved today a measure to distinguish between Palestinian refugees and their descendents, a particularly sensitive but recurring topic in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict negotiations.

The Senate Appropriations Committee waded into one of the most contentious areas of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict when it approved the amendment introduced by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) that requires the State Department to report within a year on the number of actual Palestinian refugees assisted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) separate from those who are the children and grand-children of refugees.

“The amendment simply demands basic transparency with regard to who receives U.S. taxpayer assistance,” Kirk spokesperson Kate Dickens told Foreign Policy today. “A vote against this amendment is a vote to deny taxpayers basic information about an agency they are funding.”

The UNRWA says an original 750,000 Palestinan refugees displaced in 1946-1948 eligible for its aid programs have now become five million including descendants, and the United States is a major funder of the UNRWA.

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Ros-Lehtinen: Iran, P5+1 talks end without success, making nuclear Iran more likely

May 24, 2012 Leave a comment

By Lauren Appelbaum, Political Director

Washington, May 24 - International talks between Tehran and the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) on Iran’s nuclear program ended today with no evident progress, although a new meeting is scheduled for next month in Moscow.

“The Iranian regime still hasn’t stopped enriching uranium, hasn’t turned over its enriched uranium stockpiles, and hasn’t let international inspectors into suspected weapons-related testing sites.  In fact, all Iran has agreed to is further talks,” U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

The main issue at the negotiations was Iran’s enrichment of uranium to the 20 percent purity level, which signifies a technical ability to enrich to the military-ready 90 percent level. While details of the talks remain secret, CNN reported that Iran rejected the idea of completely stopping its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations. Highly enriched uranium is used to make nuclear bombs.

Yet the two-day meeting in Baghdad began with Iran’s insistence that rounds of punishing international sanctions be lifted as a pre-condition to any halt in enriching uranium that could be used for a nuclear weapon.

“The P5+1 appear to be offering Iran more concessions, backing away from previous demands on the Iranian regime, and now agreeing to more talks that buy Iran more precious weeks for their centrifuges to spin and race toward a nuclear weapons capability,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “The endless negotiations are helpful only for Iran, no one else.  Only crippling sanctions will stop the nightmare of a nuclear-armed Iran, the world’s leading state-sponsor of global terrorism, from becoming a reality.”

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Is Egypt a Red State? New Poll Finds Romney Support There

May 22, 2012 2 Comments

By Ari Bildner, Staff Writer

Washington, May 22 – Egypt is GOP country – even though most Egyptians probably know little about the Republican presidential nominee.

A new University of Maryland poll by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution asked Egyptian voters their preference in the U.S. presidential race. Seventy-three percent chose Mitt Romney while only 25 percent chose President Obama.

Yet Shibley Telhami – a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland who directed the poll – cautioned that the result was largely due to anti-Obama sentiment among Egyptians angered by his embrace of Israeli  policy, particularly at the U.N. General Assembly last September.

“It’s essentially an anger-with-Obama indication,” he said at the poll release event in Washington on Monday. “It’s not an embrace of Romney; they know nothing about him.”

Telhami explained that Egyptians have been wrapped up in domestic turmoil ahead of the watershed presidential election Thursday, with little time to follow the U.S race. The numbers supporting Romney, he said, instead show the souring of Egyptian opinion since Obama’s landmark Cairo speech in June 2009. Most Egyptians, he said, believe Obama has been biased against the Palestinians in his dealings with Israel.

“This happened almost entirely because of his position on the Israel-Palestine question; we measured that,” Telhami said, who noted the “zero-sum” irony that Israelis conversely held negative attitudes toward Obama at first and have become positive about incumbent president in the last year.

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Ros-Lehtinen: “Is one minute too much to spend remembering murdered Israeli Olympians?”

May 21, 2012 2 Comments

By Ashley Gold, Staff Writer

Washington, May 21 - U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement Friday in response to the International Olympic Committee’s failure to accede to Israel’s request for a moment of silence at the 2012 Olympic Games to pay tribute to the 11 Israeli athletes who were taken hostage and killed by Palestinian violent extremists at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich:

Is one minute too much for the IOC to spend in remembrance of 11 innocent lives brutally cut short at the 1972 Games?

At the service the IOC held after the murder of the Israeli Olympians in Munich in 1972, the IOC President failed to even mention them in his remarks.  In the four decades since, the IOC has repeatedly refused to allow a moment of silence in their memory.

All Israel asks for is ‘Just One Minute!’  The memory and families of those brave Olympians deserve much more than that.

I strongly encourage the IOC to reconsider and allow sixty seconds of tribute to be paid to these athletes, who were murdered by violent extremists in a horrific repudiation of the very values of honor, harmony, and fraternity that the Olympics represent.

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U.S. Amb. to Israel says U.S. ready for military option for Iran

May 18, 2012 Leave a comment

Ambassador Daniel Shapiro

Ambassador Dan Shapiro

By Lauren Appelbaum, Political Editor

Washington, May 18 – Diplomatic work and sanctions may not be enough to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the U.S. ambassador to Israel said on Tuesday.

“We do believe there is time. Some time, not an unlimited amount of time,” Dan Shapiro said during a closed forum with the Israel Bar Association. “But at a certain point, we may have to make a judgment that the diplomacy will not work.”

Speaking just a week before an important round of talks with Tehran in Baghdad, Shapiro said the U.S. has the plans in place to attack Iran if necessary.

Yet he said the U.S. hopes it will not have to resort to military force.

“But that doesn’t mean that option is not fully available. Not just available, but it’s ready,” he said. “The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready.”

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