Posts For: February 2, 2015

New Chair Can’t Salvage UN Gaza Travesty

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.02.2015 - 7:15 PM

When the United Nations Human Rights Council announced its plan to convene a commission to investigate last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, it didn’t even bother pretending to be fair to the Jewish state. The UNHRC spends most of its time ignoring all of the most egregious violations of human rights and atrocities around the world and, instead, concentrates almost all of its energies on demonizing Israel and its efforts to defend its citizens against terrorist attacks. The commission it impaneled reflected that same bias. At its head was William Schabas, a Canadian law professor who had already denounced Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a war criminal and stated his belief that Hamas was not a terrorist group. Schabas bitterly resented the criticism that rained down on his head from those who considered the commission to be a kangaroo court. But rather than continue, he has now resigned, still insisting on his fitness to lead the effort. That is to be commended, but Israel ought not to be suckered into taking the UNHRC’s bait. Though it is possible that his successor might be a less egregious pick, Israel should stick to its decision not to cooperate with this travesty.

Israel was criticized for deciding not to play along with the UNHRC. It was asserted that by boycotting the panel, it was losing an opportunity to make its case to the world about its side of the story. The decision would, it was asserted, leave the field open for the Palestinians to paint the war as a tale of Jewish aggression against helpless Gaza civilians and completely ignoring the fact that Hamas not only used those people as human shields but also started the war by raining missiles down on Israeli cities and using tunnels to funnel terrorists across the border to kidnap and murder Israelis.

But anyone who has followed the UNHRC knows that no matter how much effort Israel puts into its defense the result won’t change. Schabas was an outrageous choice but he was merely the figurehead at the top of a UN structure that dictates an indictment of Israel, not its principle author.

It should be recalled that the UNHRC’s investigation of the 2008 war in Gaza—the Goldstone Commission—was a travesty that was focused almost entirely on delegitimizing Israeli self-defense while largely downplaying the actual war crimes committed by the Hamas rulers of Gaza. Ultimately Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African Jew who had been appointed to chair that commission, repudiated its findings. But that recantation came too late. The damage was already done. Whereas the UNHRC thought to put a more acceptable face on its Star Chamber investigation of Israel with Goldstone, naming Schabas showed it no longer thought it worth the bother to even put up a pretense of objectivity.

That’s why Schabas’s withdrawal changes nothing about the UNHRC’s prejudice or its methods. No one who is likely to be named to this post would be objective and anyone who was would quickly discover, as Goldstone eventually did, that the UNHRC’s staff has one objective with respect to Israel and it is not fairness or the truth.

But rather than focus solely on what is, in effect, a pro forma effort that will produce a raft of slanders and distortions no matter what evidence is presented to the panel, observers should be directing their attention to the UNHRC itself. Despite efforts to reform it, this agency remains one of the worst examples of UN bias against Israel and the Jews. Rather than helping to stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world, the UNHRC is aiding and abetting it. Rather than wring its hands about the likelihood of an unfair attack on Israel about the Gaza war, the United States ought to be pulling out of the UNHRC and leading efforts to isolate it so as to prevent the world body from doing even more damage. But since the Obama administration is led by a president who is infatuated with the UN and often enraged by the temerity of Israel’s leaders to both defend their country and to urge others to speak out against threats to its security—such as the Iranian nuclear threat—don’t expect common sense or courage from Washington on the UNHRC.

In the meantime, decent persons both here and elsewhere should be denouncing the UNHRC’s latest attempt to smear Israel, no matter who is at its head.

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Dem Electoral College Hysteria to Hypocrisy

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.02.2015 - 6:10 PM

Back in 2011, Democrats were up in arms about a proposal being floated by Republicans in the Pennsylvania Legislature that would have split the state’s Electoral College votes in presidential elections. The plan would have divided the vote by congressional district rather than having them determined on a winner-take-all statewide basis. This scheme was widely denounced by liberals as nothing less than the moral equivalent of the 2000 Florida recount that some Democrats still falsely claim was stolen from Al Gore. Today, Nebraska is considering doing the opposite: changing to a winner-take-all used by 48 of the states and scrapping the existing law which would divvy up their votes the way the Pennsylvania GOP wanted to do. What did liberals think about that? They are defending the existing law to the last ditch as a sympathetic article in the New York Times reported over the weekend.

Currently Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that divide their Electoral College votes by congressional district. This is not a theoretical construct since, as the New York Times noted, Barack Obama won one Electoral College vote in deep-red Nebraska in 2008 because he won a majority in a district that encompasses Omaha. However, Republicans in the legislature want to put an end to any possibility of a repeat performance by Hillary Clinton. Democrats think this wrong and believe, as their state chairman said, that Republicans are trying to “deny our constituents of the right to be relevant in a national election.”

He’s right about that, but the same could have been said of members of his party four years ago when they screamed bloody murder over the GOP plan to give voters in the many districts where Republicans are the majority that same right to relevance. Of course, if that were to happen, Republicans would be given more than a single or even a few stray votes but would, in all likelihood win the majority of Pennsylvania’s 20 votes. The Huffington Post recalled the Pennsylvania Republican scheme shortly after Barack Obama’s reelection and gamed out the results if, as they called it, the “Republican Vote-Rigging Plan” were implemented with Romney getting a 273-262 win rather than Obama prevailing by 332-206.

Because Democrats often tend to be concentrated in cities and districts where they win by lopsided margins rather than being evenly distributed around the country, the GOP has a natural advantage in the competition for control of the House of Representatives. Liberals claim this is purely the product of gerrymandering, but it is more the result of the Voting Rights Act requiring the creation of majority-minority districts that herd Democrats into a few constituencies rather than spreading them out.

Thus, while letting each district have its say sounds good, it might increase the chances that the loser of the popular vote would win the Electoral College, and that is something no one in either party should want to see happen again.

Thus, national Democrats should be weighing in to support Nebraska Republicans, lest their silence be considered tacit support for a reversal of the law in other states where it would do their party far more damage than the potential loss of a single vote. But, as you may well expect, the silence from Democrats, especially the same liberal organs that waxed hysterical about the Pennsylvania scheme, is deafening. Even worse, as some of the quotes in the Times piece illustrate, the party is giving tacit support to efforts to preserve the status quo in Nebraska. Indeed, if the 2016 election turns out to be close, they’ll be fighting hard to steal that single Cornhusker vote that was merely the icing on Obama’s cake in 2008.

Pennsylvania Republicans have wisely not sought to revive what turned out to be a destructive and futile debate in 2011. But their counterparts in Nebraska should not be intimidated into giving up their efforts to join the other 48 winner-take-all states by liberals claiming they are being unfair. If Democrats aren’t going to put principle over partisan interest, there’s no reason for them to do so either.

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Obama’s Budget and Our Potemkin Politics

Seth Mandel | @SethAMandel 02.02.2015 - 4:35 PM

After President Obama’s State of the Union address, I noted that even partisan-left media outlets were unwilling to play along with Obama’s self-serving framing of his foreign policy. Now Obama’s getting the same treatment on domestic policy as well. It’s a rude awakening for a president so accustomed to being treated with kid gloves by an adoring media, and a sure sign he’s officially a lame duck.

Obama has released his proposed budget, and commentators have been mostly unable to stifle their disbelief. To be fair, part of the reason Obama’s budget is so unrealistic is that the Republicans currently control Congress, so it has no chance of passing. But in truth, that probably doesn’t change its chances so much as it gives the president and his party’s populists an excuse to claim Republican intransigence. Many Democrats surely don’t want to be put in a position to vote for the taxman’s anthem that is this budget document.

Here, via the New York Times, are some of the ways it’s being received by the left. A Times reporter’s description of its content:

President Obama presented a budget on Monday that is more utopian vision than pragmatic blueprint. It proposes a politically improbable reshaping of the tax code and generous new social spending initiatives that would shift resources from the wealthy to the middle class.

The same reporter’s take on what it’s missing:

Absent from the plan is any pretense of trying to address the main drivers of the long-term debt — Social Security and Medicare — a quest that has long divided both parties and ultimately proved impossible. The document instead indicates that Mr. Obama, after years of being hemmed in on his fiscal priorities because of politics and balance sheets, feels newly free to outline an ambitious set of goals that will set the terms of a debate between Democrats and Republicans and shape the 2016 presidential election.

A former economic advisor to Vice President Biden’s opinion of it:

“It’s a visionary document and basically says, ‘You’re with me or you’re not,’ and we can have big philosophical arguments about the role of government, and perhaps in 2016 we will,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Back to the Times reporter on Obama the Bipartisan Healer:

Yet the budget confirms that for Mr. Obama, the era of searching for a “grand bargain” with Republicans on entitlements and spending — an exercise that alienated liberal Democrats who were loath to consider any measure to rein in Medicare and Social Security — is over.

And all this, believe it or not, is still a favorable reading of it. The Times repeats uncritically the president’s propagandistic declarations of “middle-class economics” and that the bill’s tax increases would hit “the rich” without investigating how these taxes and fees would end up on the shoulders of the “middle class”–to say nothing of the president’s own shots at confiscating middle-class cash, like his ill-fated 529 plan.

And it also takes as Gospel the idea that Obama has truly been searching, in good faith, for grand bipartisan solutions. The lesson of Obama’s first six years, with occasional exceptions, is that “bipartisan” to Obama means that Republicans vote for his policies. The Democrats have shown they can file legislation without Republican input and without Republican amendments with a clear conscience. And during the rare times when Democrats and Republicans really were negotiating in good faith for a deal, Obama showed a propensity to sabotage those talks or poison the well.

So it might be more accurate to say that the era of pretending to search for a “grand bargain” is officially over. And that, in its own way, is the one honest aspect of the budget. The rest is theater. And theater is, increasingly, what national politics has become.

There’s the State of the Union itself, which is clear pageantry made all the more intolerable by the orchestrated applause and non-applause, standing and sitting, laughing and scowling from the congressional audience. There are the presidential nominating conventions, which are devoid of drama of any kind. (Though the Democrats’ 2012 convention did have that one hectic unscripted moment when the party’s delegates angrily voted down adding pro-Israel language to the party’s platform.)

And now we have Potemkin budgets, constructed to look pretty but act as a façade to cover the ideological ruins behind it. Except by year seven the press gets tired of playing along, even for Obama.

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A Vaccine for Gaffes? Chris Christie Needs It

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.02.2015 - 2:50 PM

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s presidential hopes got a boost on Friday when Mitt Romney dropped out of the 2016 race leaving some room for establishment donors to choose someone other than Jeb Bush to support. But his greatest weakness was never really the fact that there is stiff competition for the backing of business, Wall Street, and party leaders around the country. Nor is Bridgegate the only burden that he must carry around with him in his quest for the White House. His problem is the same propensity for blunt and unpredictable remarks that made him a YouTube star vaulting him to national attention. We are reminded of that today as the backlash over remarks he made about vaccination during a visit to Britain have created exactly the wrong kind of attention for a person running for president.

In Britain for a trade mission, Christie was asked about the problem created by a growing minority of American parents who are refusing to vaccinate their children due to a combination of misinformation about side effects and bizarre theories about health. Here’s what he said:

Mr. Christie, when asked about the connection between the new measles cases and parents who object to the long-recommended vaccine against it, said that he and his wife had vaccinated their four children. He called that “the best expression I can give you of my opinion.”

But he added: “It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”

Mr. Christie said that “not every vaccine is created equal, and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

On its face, that sounds like he is neutral about parents exercising their “choice” to refuse vaccinations and “balance” in the response of the government to this trend.

Given the menace to public health that the anti-vaccination effort has caused, that brought down the opprobrium of many concerned citizens as well as a host of political kibitzers, including gloating Democrats, on Christie’s head.

In response, Christie “clarified” his remarks on Sunday night:

“The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated,” Christie’s office said in a statement. “At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate.”

That’s a big improvement on his original off-the-cuff remark but, to be as blunt as the governor usually is, the damage is already done.

It doesn’t matter that Christie may have meant something very different from what it seemed like he was saying when he was talking about “choice” and “balance.” Perhaps he was thinking of vaccines for rare diseases that might not be worth the effort to get everyone to take them. But whatever it is that he meant, there is no doubt that he demonstrated that while his loose lips helped build his reputation as a political truth-teller, they could also sink him.

As to the substance of the matter, put me down as one of those who think that the only sensible response of any leader to questions about vaccines should be an adamant call for all citizens to take advantage of them. To talk of choice or to indulge our libertarian instincts on the issue of vaccination is a huge error in judgment. As a popular Internet meme puts it, “if my kid can’t take a peanut butter sandwich to school, our kid shouldn’t be able to bring an easily preventable disease.”

Of course, we won’t elect a president based on his or her ability to have a consistent and smart record on vaccination. This is a one-day story about a gaffe, not a political disaster.

But it is one more piece of evidence for Republicans to take account of when weighing whether Christie is presidential material. He may keep telling us that a tough-talking blue state governor is exactly what the GOP and the country needs. But what he is also doing is reminding us that this is a man who often speaks candidly and at length when he should stick to talking points or say nothing. It’s bad enough to be the guy who tells people to “sit down and shut up” when challenged on the stump. But it’s far worse to be the guy who says something dumb or easily misinterpreted. If Christie doesn’t believe me, he can ask Mitt “47 percent” Romney if a tendency to make gaffes can be an obstacle to the White House.

This foolish kerfuffle probably won’t stop Christie from running for president since he is clearly burning to do so. But it will, along with every other verbal mistake he has already made and those that have yet to leave his mouth, be held against him by GOP donors, activists, and voters. If there was a vaccine for gaffes, Christie should obtain it. But it may already be too late.

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Does the ISIS Beheading Prove Japan’s Prime Minister Right?

Michael Auslin 02.02.2015 - 1:40 PM

Japan’s second hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, has apparently been beheaded by ISIS, following the fate of the countryman he sought to help rescue. In an unusual, some would say unprecedented, response, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been quoted as vowing “to make the terrorists pay the price.” Such rhetoric, it is being pointed out in Japan and the United States, is something one expects to hear from American presidents, but not from Japan’s famously bland leaders.

Yet Abe has made a hallmark of rocking the boat in his second term in office, making him both admired and despised. Many Japanese (and foreigners) consider him a nationalist hawk, and his fighting words will confirm their opinion that he is a danger to Japan’s security. Others think that he is simply acknowledging a reality that Tokyo for far too long ignored: that the world is a dangerous place, that Japan cannot hide from it, and that it has a role to play in protecting not only its own interests, but stability more generally.

It was this last that may have doomed Goto and his fellow Japanese Haruna Yukawa. Abe’s pledge of $200 million in humanitarian aid to countries fighting ISIS apparently caused the two Japanese to be targeted. If Abe hadn’t done that, so the thinking goes, if he hadn’t pushed Japan into a crisis that did not affect it, then there would have been no kidnapping and murder of Japanese nationals.

To adopt such an attitude is to give a victory to ISIS, in transferring blame to some degree to the victim (in this case, a country), instead of the aggressors. Abe is right, and ISIS has proved him so: the danger of radical Islam, or of other disruptive actors, like North Korea, cannot simply be ignored. That may not mean getting involved in every case, but it does mean clearly recognizing the threats to any sense of civilized norms, and deciding how and when to act.

That, of course, is the most difficult, and Abe has now drawn a line in the sand, so to speak, by stating that some punishment will be meted out. Given that Japan lacks an offensive military capability, not to mention a hostage rescue capability of the kind that has failed even the United States in dealing with ISIS, Abe’s words may be written off as overblown rhetoric. Yet in saying them, he is indicating the path that he wants Japan to go down. The word’s third-largest economy, and a force for stability in Asia, should not be so impotent that it cannot protect, rescue, or avenge its citizens. It may be another sign of how Japan will change in the coming years in ways that will complement, not counter, U.S. efforts to respond to global disorder.

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Walker’s Early Surge More Important Than It Might Seem

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.02.2015 - 1:20 PM

Given the frenetic activity by possible Republican presidential candidates in the last month, it’s important to remind ourselves at times that we’re still a year away from the first primaries. That’s why no one should be too impressed with polls this far away from the voting since they are still more of an indication of name recognition than firm support or how the various contenders will actually stack up against each other once the campaigning begins in earnest. But the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll of Iowa Republicans is significant not so much because its results give us an idea of who will win next year but because it shows that one particular candidate has started to catch on. The person in question is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who leads the crowded field, albeit with only 15 percent of Iowans claiming him as their first choice. But the question facing Walker and his supporters is whether this surge from the bottom to the head of the pack is coming too soon.

The poll was taken before Mitt Romney decided on Friday that he wouldn’t run. But given that it asked respondents to list their first and second choices in the Republican caucus, Walker’s gains are not a fluke as he was also the runner-up for 10 percent, a figure that tied him with Romney for the most in that category. Indeed, if Romney’s supporters are given to those they named as their second choice, the standings with Walker on top don’t change.

The rave reviews for Walker’s speech at the recent Iowa Freedom Summit may have been the engine for the boost in his support. But Walker’s efforts to increase his national visibility in recent weeks, as he made no secret of his desire for the presidency, have gone well. Though he has yet to be put under the microscope of the national press or face the pressure of a presidential race, his experience as the left’s piñata during the battles over union legislation in Wisconsin during his first term in Madison have prepared him well for the ordeal.

And if we weren’t already convinced that he is moving up to the first tier from the ranks of the GOP wannabes, yesterday’s BloombergView column by Al Hunt made it clear that liberals are starting to take Walker seriously. Hunt previewed one of the key talking points that Democrats will use against the Wisconsin governor should he be the nominee by writing a piece that focused almost entirely on his lack of a college degree. As Seth Mandel wrote here last April, it was inevitable that should Walker become a presidential candidate, we would be hear the left dismiss him as a “college dropout.” Hunt digs deeper beyond the epithets and says the fact that more than 40 percent of Americans have such a degree bodes ill for Walker’s chances. What’s more, he says that anyone who doubts that this is a big problem for him should test out their theory at the next cocktail party they attend.

But if 60 percent of Americans are in the same boat as Walker, it’s likely that an even greater number of them don’t spend much time at cocktail parties, or at least the kind Hunt is referring to where those in attendance are expected to snigger at those lesser beings who haven’t finish college. Granted, it may be that a lot of us like the idea of putting the country in the hands of someone who is smart. But given the poor performance in the White House of a lot of the highly educated people we’ve put there in recent decades, as well as the fact that most Americans probably know a lot of dumbbells and timeservers who managed to graduate an institution of higher learning, that prejudice may not be dispositive. Certainly, Walker’s ability to articulate credible positions on the issues and manage a large government bureaucracy while withstanding withering attacks and attempts at intimidation by union thugs and their Democratic Party allies shows that not having a four-year degree is no bar to success in running a state.

Expect to hear more such attacks in the comings months as it becomes apparent that Walker is not merely one more outlier hoping for lightening to strike. Walker appeals to a broad range of Republican constituencies including the establishment business community that likes his record as governor, Tea Partiers who see him as a fellow opponent of taxes and spending, Evangelicals who see him as one of their own, and even foreign-policy hawks who like the things he’s been saying about President Obama’s failures. That gives him an edge that candidates who are despised by any combination of those groups don’t have.

But is it too soon for a candidate surge? During the 2012 race seemingly every candidate had his or her moment, including weeks or even months when people like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and even Herman Cain moved temporarily to the top of the pack. Good poll results are only meaningful if they lead directly to winning states.

But good poll results for Walker are important because they illustrate, just at the moment when Jeb Bush has assumed the mantle of frontrunner, that there is a viable alternative with significant support. That will give Walker the ability to raise money, including from some establishment types who might otherwise gravitate to Bush or Chris Christie, that will enable him to set up the organizations in states around the country that will give him a real chance for the nomination.

One poll does not a nominee make. But this one may have given Walker the ability to compete on something like a level playing field with all the other GOP hopefuls. And that, rather than winning a particular news cycle, is a very big deal indeed.

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If Iran Gets Nukes, Will Obama Be Satisfied with Imposing “Costs?”

Seth Mandel | @SethAMandel 02.02.2015 - 12:55 PM

President Obama’s interview with Fareed Zakaria, aired yesterday on CNN, had been teased out last week with excerpts on the president’s response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress. It was the least important part of the interview; all schoolyard drama, no substance. Which is precisely why CNN used it as viewer bait. But in the full interview, the president actually said something quite important. Though the comment was about Ukraine, it has significant implications for the effort to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Admittedly, what the president said wasn’t exactly new. It was a new riff on an old song. But its timing offers a window into how the president approaches conflict resolution around the world. “Would it be fair to say,” Zakaria asked the president, “that with regard to Russia your policy has been pretty effective in imposing real costs on the Russian economy, but it has not deterred Vladimir Putin from creating instability in Ukraine?” The president agreed: “I think that’s entirely fair.” But then he went back to a familiar well: “And I think that is a testament to the bad decisions that Mr. Putin is making on behalf of his country.”

He went on to say this:

There’s no formula in which this ends up being good for Russia. The annexation of Crimea is a cost, not a benefit to Russia. The days, in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is over. The power of countries today is measured by your knowledge, your skills, your ability to export goods to invent new products and new services, your influence. And none of those things are provided by his strategy. Now, but what is absolutely true is that if you have a leader who continually drives past the off ramps that we’ve provided, given the size of the Russian military, given the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO country, and so as a consequence there are clear limits in terms of what we would do militarily, Mr. Putin has not been stopped so far.

The obvious takeaway is that what Obama said isn’t true, nor is it close to being true. It is, in fact, an astoundingly silly view of the world, which explains quite a bit about why the president’s approach to foreign policy has been so disastrous. It’s also contradictory; after all, if the “power of countries today is measured” in part by “your influence,” then Russia gets more than a passing grade. Additionally, we should all hope that with an Obama-Biden-Kerry team at the helm, power isn’t “measured by your knowledge.”

But the president’s statement is completed by his next sentence:

To those who would suggest that we need to do more, what I’ve said to them is that we can exact higher and higher costs and that’s exactly what we’re doing, and we can bring diplomatic pressure to bear.

This is the key to understanding Obama’s strategy, such as it is, to these conflicts. Obama’s goal is not to prevent nor reverse the rogue states’ actions. He aims not to turn Russia back nor even really stop what’s going on in eastern Ukraine. He simply wants Putin to one day regret his actions. He wants to exact “costs”–and that’s all.

The administration is reportedly considering giving real support to Ukrainian forces, a development that would be far too late to undo most of the damage but might stop Ukraine from slowly disintegrating. Yet they are still not ready to pull the trigger, apparently, and we all know how well the administration’s plan to arm the Syrian rebels–delayed, bungled, and abandoned–worked out. More likely, the president is simply looking for a way to be able to say he did more than he did.

Which is why the “cost” theory Obama’s so fond of should worry those opposed to a nuclear Iran, among other conflicts. Obama is not generally a fan of sanctions; on both Russia and Iran, he’s been an obstacle to meaningful sanctions. But when he does begrudgingly sign sanctions legislation he’s unable to prevent, he likes to think his work is done.

That’s the point of Obama’s protestation that “we can exact higher and higher costs.” Russia will still get to do what it wants and take what it wants, but Obama hopes it will cost them some cash. What’s alarming about this (as opposed to just insulting, which it is to the Ukrainians) is that if it were applied to Iran, it would mean Obama sees sanctions and penalties as an end in themselves, not as a tactic to help obtain a specific outcome.

That would mean an Iranian nuke (or the Iranians being beyond the point of no return) and Obama would sit there smirking about it on CNN talking about all the costs Iran has accumulated in order to get that bomb. He would admonish Iran that they may have achieved nuclear capability, but great nations aren’t measured by their power and prestige, they’re measured by whether Barack Obama thinks they’ve made prudent financial investments.

If Obama wants to write a column for the Financial Times, he’d still be wrong. But he’d leave a lot less rubble in his wake.

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Why ISIS’s Grisly Tactics Haven’t Backfired

Max Boot | @MaxBoot 02.02.2015 - 12:15 PM

To the chronicle of its depravities, ISIS has now added a new chapter by beheading two Japanese hostages. A Jordanian pilot who was captured by ISIS may be the next to go, if he has not been murdered already. ISIS, which reportedly seized at least 23 foreigners, now has only a few of them left, including a male British journalist and a female American aid worker.

Some are starting to wonder what ISIS has achieved with its high-profile executions. And indeed the countries targeted in its grisly beheading videos–Britain, the U.S., Japan–have not knuckled under. Indeed these executions have had the opposite reaction, leading the U.S. and the UK to begin military action against ISIS along with European and Arab allies. In Jordan, support for its role in the anti-ISIS coalition has been growing, rather than shrinking, as a result of the threats confronting its captured pilot who hails from a prominent tribe. Even Japan, which historically has not used military force abroad, is now threatening retaliation for the murder of its hostages.

So is it safe to say that ISIS’s brutal tactics have backfired? Not so fast. Its barbaric actions may cause revulsion but they also inspire fear among many and help to keep millions of dollars in ransom payments flowing for the release of European hostages. There is even a small subset of Muslims who are inspired by the spectacle of the “Islamic State” waging merciless war on “infidels” (however innocent). These admirers are presumably among the 1,000 or so foreigners a month traveling to Syria to join ISIS and rival groups such as the Al-Nusra Front. Most of all such atrocities keep ISIS in the news and serve as a counterpoint to news of setbacks it has suffered, such as the loss of Kobani in northern Syria to Kurd fighters backed by American airpower.

Certainly since ISIS began its beheadings last summer, it has suffered setbacks; U.S. Central Command claims that 6,000 of its fighters have been killed in that period by coalition airpower. But in that time ISIS has managed to hold onto Mosul and Fallujah in Iraq while actually expanding its control in Syria.

So horrific as ISIS’s tactics are, it’s too soon to call them a failure, largely because the Obama administration has placed so many limitations on American participation in the anti-ISIS coalition (e.g., no “boots on the ground”) and has done so little to mobilize anti-ISIS fighters among the Sunnis of Syria and Iraq. As long as that continues to be the case, ISIS will get away with its hideous crimes.

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Anti-Israel Feeling in Britain Reaching Dangerous Levels

Tom Wilson | @TomJamesWilson 02.02.2015 - 10:25 AM

Beyond Europe, the only country the British now dislike more than Israel is North Korea. That is the finding of a new survey by the foreign policy institute Chatham House. Even Iran is viewed more favorably than Israel. These findings come amidst a fraught debate over whether or not Britain is becoming more anti-Semitic. But because much of the British establishment and even significant sections of Britain’s Jewish community refuse to view anti-Israel feeling as synonymous with anti-Semitism, people are not taking this phenomenon nearly as seriously as they might one day wish they had.

In all, 35 percent said they viewed Israel unfavorably, as opposed to 33 percent who felt negatively toward Iran (down from 45 percent in the previous survey), 21 percent for Saudi Arabia, 9 percent for Egypt, and 2 percent for Indonesia. These other figures are an indication of just how warped attitudes toward the Jewish state have become.

What relation, if any, this has with rising anti-Semitism is now a fiercely debated subject. Indeed, there are plenty who dispute the premise that anti-Semitism even is rising in Britain. Something of the confusion was recently expressed by Michael Portillo—formerly a senior Conservative party figure—who told the BBC that while he thought anti-Semitism had diminished in Britain, Jews were still being identified with the policies of Israel. And Israel, Portillo noted, is becoming increasingly unpopular, something which he also stressed he didn’t believe to be justified. But there we have the contradiction. People hating Jews because of an unjustified loathing of Israel is the new anti-Semitism.

Besides, mounting evidence shows direct anti-Semitism is indeed on the rise. By the middle of 2014, British Jews had witnessed a 400 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents compared to the previous year. And then there are the opinion surveys. One carried out at the beginning of this year by the European Jewish Congress found that 15 percent of young Brits approved of the idea that Jews should be forced to carry special identification and that Jewish businesses should be marked. A similar number said they needed more evidence to be convinced the Holocaust had happened. Another survey, this one commissioned by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, found that half of British people agreed with at least one of several anti-Semitic statements put before them.

There has been some recognition of this problem by the government—which has stepped up policing in Jewish areas—as well as by the media, even while no shortage of Jewish voices loudly insist that what is plainly happening in fact isn’t. But there are also other voices who would blame the Jewish state for causing this growing hostility toward British Jews. On Holocaust Memorial Day (no less) Britain’s chief rabbi was asked three times by Sky News reporter Adam Boulton whether Israeli policy was contributing to anti-Semitism in the UK. It is lost on people like Boulton that in a previous era they would have been asking the rabbi if it was not Jewish dishonesty in business, or their disloyalty to the host nation, that was in fact contributing to anti-Semitism.

Today Britain seems to be full of people who in one breath insist they oppose anti-Semitism wholeheartedly, only to then demonize Israel mercilessly in the next. One wonders if in 1930s Germany it was possible to find people who maintained they didn’t wish to see Jews mistreated, but endorsed the Nuremburg Race Laws nonetheless. During this week’s House of Lords debate on Palestinian statehood the now infamous Baroness Jenny Tonge complained that “critics” of Israel such as herself are often labelled anti-Semitic. However, the baroness swiftly proceeded to make a number of anti-Semitic assertions in the very same speech. Not only did she claim that injustices against Palestinians “sowed the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism” so putting all of us at risk, but she also urged Jewish leaders to condemn Israel so as to spare their community from suffering the same hatred Israel now receives. And what if they don’t? What if they continue to support Israel? Is the implication then that they deserve everything they get?

The more of this discourse one listens to the more apparent it becomes that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have not only become inseparably tangled, but worse still the two are perpetuating one another. As a result, 45 percent of British Jews say they fear Jews don’t have a future in Britain. Among those who say they are considering leaving is the actress Maureen Lipmann, yet some in her own community have labelled her an alarmist. Indeed, Jewish talk show host Esther Rantzen and the Guardian writer David Conn have even suggested that British Jews are being ungrateful with all their talk of anti-Semitism and thoughts of leaving.

To be sure, Britain is not France. Not yet, at least. But to avoid that, those who care must start saying unequivocally that demonization of Israel is the most dangerous form of anti-Semitism in the world today. Furthermore, it is time to recognize that Israel advocacy in Britain and Europe has failed. The only thing left to be done is to stop apologizing for Israel defending herself and to instead put those doing the attacking under the spotlight. If exposed to the full horror of Israel’s Islamist enemies, there are still many fair-minded people in Britain who could be persuaded to see things differently.

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My Friend Steve Hayner

Peter Wehner 02.02.2015 - 10:05 AM

“I spent a couple of hours with Steve and Sharol Hayner today in Atlanta,” the senior pastor of a church I attended 15 years ago wrote me several weeks ago. “I thought about taking off my shoes since I was clearly on holy ground.”

Then, last Friday, I received a note from another friend, this one I first met in high school and with whom I attended college. “[My husband] and I just returned from being with the Hayners,” she wrote. “The whole time I felt as if I was standing on holy ground.”

So just what kind of couple would elicit this kind of response from others–spontaneous references from two people who have never met, who visited the Hayners at different times, both testifying that they had found themselves on holy ground?

If you knew Steve and Sharol Hayner, you’d understand.

Steve died on Saturday afternoon, at the age of 66, after having been stricken with pancreatic cancer last April. I first met Steve when he was associate pastor for University Ministries at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, which is where I worshipped while attending the University of Washington. Thus began one of the most significant and treasured relationships of my life.

To give you a sense of the effect Steve had on people, when he took over the ministry it consisted of 30 students; within five years, 900 students were attending the Tuesday night services. From there Steve, who received his Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews in Hebrew and Semitic Studies, would eventually make his way to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, where he served as president for 13 years, and president of Columbia Theological Seminary, where he served until shortly before his passing.

I can’t possibly do justice to his personal qualities in this post, though I will say two things. First, he was the greatest dispenser of grace of any person I have ever come across–and among the greatest blessings of my life is to have been the recipient of that grace. And second, Steve created a sense of loyalty and affection among his friends that has been ummatched in my life. His friends came from many different countries, ethnic backgrounds, races, ages, professions, political parties, and faiths and religious traditions. He had an amazing ability to listen well and to provide wise counsel when necessary, to connect to people and to make them feel valued. He placed enormous worth on relational integrity, which explains why his illness created such an outpouring of love for him. People wanted to give back to him just a measure of what they had received from him, and longed to give voice to their feelings for him. (His CaringBridge.org site includes reflections and updates by Steve and Sharol that has some 150,000 visits and literally thousands of comments from people sharing the ways Steve and Sharol have touched their lives over the decades. You would do yourself quite a favor by reading some of those posts.)

Which brings me to the final chapter in Steve’s life.

A man completely free of affectation, he spoke honestly and transparently about the effects of the disease–the “break through” pain and nausea, the times of discouragement, and the feelings of grief and loss surrounding his impending death. He kept us updated on the medical twists and turns and the efforts to manage the symptoms. But above all, he showed us how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with remarkable dignity, courage, and faithfulness. I took to sharing some of Steve’s posts with people I thought might be touched by them, including one I sent to a friend who is an atheist. He wrote back saying, “It’s letters like this — the wisdom, the grace — that make me wish I weren’t an atheist.”

In a post written roughly seven weeks before he was to pass away, in speaking about the mixed signals about his health and going through times that are both encouraging and discouraging, Steve wrote this:

When our children were teenagers, and going through a stage where it seemed like every little thing took on immense proportions, I used to say to them, “So what do you think this is like in light of eternity?” In other words, is this really worth the fuss? But I have realized that it’s not just kids who have a tough time with perspective. It’s all of us. We blow so many things out of proportion. Little things become huge issues. And even big things become issues that seem much bigger than they probably are. Whether it is a stressful circumstance, a difficult relationship, a confusing problem, or a shameful failure, there is so much in our lives that feels like it will overwhelm us.

But the fact of the matter is that “in light of eternity” most of what we face takes on a different proportion. Circumstances pass. Relationships can be healed. Even horrid failures are cut down to size by time and by God’s grace at work in our lives.

And then he added this:

Living with a life-threatening, terminal disease has a way of providing a different perspective. At least it can. Eternity is a little closer–a little more tangible. But I still feel confused from day to day about my situation. Am I really dying? How much longer can I expect to live? How do I stay encouraged when the evidence about my condition is mixed? What will the next stage of my disease be like? How do I live with consistency from day to day when my circumstances continue to vary?

What seems to be important now, as it has been throughout my illness, is that I keep my eyes on those things which remind me of eternity. There are loving relationships, for example, which call me back. And there is the centrality of joy, gratitude and service to be considered every day. All of these qualities keep my heart facing eternity rather than wallowing in inward confusion. It is the eternal focus that keeps me steady. Love embraces me. Joy uplifts me. Gratitude settles me. Service focuses me away from myself and back on the lives of others. When I lean into love, joy, gratitude and service, I worry less, because eternity surrounds me and God’s grace upholds me.

To live a life of integrity, faithfulness, and joy is one thing, and a very great thing; but to also walk to the finish line of this life demonstrating those qualities, even as your body is being ravaged by cancer, is even rarer and even greater. He and his amazing wife Sharol leaned into life and love right to the end of his earthly pilgrimage.

My visit to see Steve and Sharol for the last time was one of the more indelible moments of my life. We spoke about Steve’s life and our relationship, about things past and things present. Steve spoke about the “pre-eminence of love and grace.” The central character of God, he told me and the friend I was with, is love and grace, and the central mission of Christians is to extend His hand of grace to others.

Steve Hayner did that as well as anyone I have ever known, with as much joy as anyone I have ever known. He has now gone home to be with his Savior, where sickness and sorrow, pain and death are felt and feared no more.

But I will miss him so much.

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