by Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may have snubbed President Obama yesterday but almost everyone is still giving him full credit for not being Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The West’s favorite “moderate” mullah met with a gaggle of liberal mainstream media types Wednesday morning for a mostly off-the-record gathering and, despite being unwilling to pander much to their sensibilities, still left them thinking, in the words of New Yorker editor David Remnick, “That at least on the surface this is somebody who above all is interested in reversing the really consequential damage to the economy that sanctions have wrought over time.”

I’ve no doubt that is true, as the conceit of Rouhani’s mission is apparently to persuade the West that because he isn’t a raving lunatic like his predecessor Ahmadinejad, that should be enough to earn Iran the world’s trust. And the chief proof of this is his willingness to say that it was a bad thing that the Nazis killed Jews. At Remnick’s prodding, Rouhani said as much today. As Politico reports: Read more…

By Jeffrey Goldberg, Bloomberg

By WISSAM KEYROUZ, DAWN

DUBAI: Three months after a new emir stepped in, Qatar’s political clout has shrunk following the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president and with Riyadh emerging as the Syrian opposition’s main backer, analysts say.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the youngest Arab head of state, succeeded his father Sheikh Hamad who abdicated on June 25.

It was a surprise move, especially coming at a time when the energy-rich Gulf state appeared to be at the peak of its political influence in the Arab world.

Just a week later, Egypt’s army ousted president Mohamed Morsi and began a crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood party and supporters.
Read more…

By Noga Gur-Arieh, Jewish Journal

Last Friday, Reuters reported that IDF soldiers “threw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yanked a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.” The Diplomat, Marion Castaing, was quoted saying: “They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity. This is how international law is being respected here.”

According to the report, Khirbet Al-Makhul, where this incident occurred, “was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel’s high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.” And added that “Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.”
Read more…

Investors Business Daily
Sep 25, 2013

Weakness: After weeks of kowtowing to Iran’s tyrants, President Obama couldn’t so much as get Hasan Rouhani to shake his hand at the U.N. Tuesday. Seems the mullahs still have a knack for detecting weakness in U.S. leaders.

Has the U.S. ever fallen in global stature as far and as fast as it has under the Obama administration? Not even Jimmy Carter drew so many snubs, insults and slights from world leaders in such a short period as Obama has in this past month.

Tuesday, Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, who carefully cultivates a PR image as a “reformer” despite his close ties to the mullahs, blew off no less than three attempts by President Obama to shake his hand at the United Nations. The Iranian tweeted that he was meeting with the presidents of Austria, Pakistan and France instead. He literally told the leader of the Free World his busy schedule just wouldn’t permit it.
Read more…

By David E. Sanger, NYT

WASHINGTON — For five years, President Obama has publicly struggled with the question of when America is willing to act as the world’s policeman, and when he will insist that others take the lead, or at least share the risks, costs and resentments it engenders.

He surged forces into Afghanistan only to quickly reverse himself, speeding the withdrawal with the declaration that “it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.” He briefly joined the fight to halt a slaughter in Libya, but left quickly and refused to go into Syria, a far more complex civil war he saw as nothing but a potential quagmire.

His speech Tuesday at the United Nations signaled how what some have called the Obama Doctrine is once again evolving.
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GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST

“A Palestinian state does not guarantee Israeli security. It is a recipe for Israel’s destruction,” Likud MK Feiglin says.

Politicians on the Israeli Right expressed frustration with US President Barack Obama’s focus on the need for Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians in his speech on Tuesday to the UN General Assembly in New York.

The politicians were particularly outraged by Obama’s statement that Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depends on the realization of a Palestinian state.
Read more…

YNET

Continued control of the Gaza Strip by Islamist movement Hamas is in Israel’s security interests, the Israeli army’s top commander for the region said on Tuesday.

It was the first time a senior commander had publicly stated an Israeli interest in continued control of the territory by a group with which it fought the deadly eight-day conflict – Operation Pillar of Defense – just last November.

Southern Command chief Major General Sami Turgeman told Israel’s Channel Two that only Hamas had the power to enforce broad respect for the truce that ended that conflict and limit rocket fire into Israel from the territory.

“What we want is calm and security in the Gaza Strip,” Turgeman said.

“Hamas, currently the sovereign power in the territory, has the means and the know-how. I see no alternative to control being exercised by Hamas.” Read more…

By Arlene Kushner

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!  Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.  The effects are apparent in many countries.  Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.”    Sir Winston Churchill  “The River War” 1899

By Joe King

“The overwhelming majority (of Muslims) want peace, justice, fairness and tolerance.”   US President Barack Hussein Obama

36% of Indonesian Muslims favor floggings and amputation. (Pew Research 2010)

42% of Indonesian Muslims favor stoning adulterers.  (Pew Research 2010)

43% of Indonesian Muslims have a positive view of Hezbullah (Pew Research 2010)

39% of Indonesian Muslims have a positive view of Hamas (Pew Research 2010)

So much for President Obama’s views on Muslim moderation.
Read more…

By Charles Bybelezer, JPOST

Marking the end of the combat mission in a speech at Fort Bragg (the same location where George W. Bush had declared war in 2003), President Barack Obama emphasized repeatedly that he was fulfilling his 2008 campaign pledge of an Iraq pull-out, while praising the courage of American soldiers and vowing that Iraqi forces were prepared to assume responsibility for their country’s security.

“Of course,” he noted, “violence will not end…. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife.”
Read more…

According to this article,
1.Netanyahu is in control of negotiations or at least he has no fetters.
2. He hasn’t conceded anything,
3. he has kept Indyk and other Americans out of the negotiating room,
4. he is demanding that security be discussed first,
5. he has kept Livni on a short leash, and
6. he made a “final offer” to withdraw from 60 percent of the West Bank in favor of a Palestinian state.

Could it be?

DEBKA Exclusive Report, Sept 23/13

No word of condemnation has come from any Palestinian leader for the murders of two Israeli soldiers two days apart by West Bank Palestinians: Saturday, Sept. 21, Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, from Bat Yam, was found murdered in a water hole near the West Bank town of Qalqilya. Sunday, another 20-year old, 1st Sgt. Gal Koby from Tirat Hacarmel, was killed by a single Palestinian sniper’s bullet while on guard at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
Read more…

By Victor Hanson, PJ MEDIA

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way Syria ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper. We are back where we started — lots of people dying — as the crisis recedes with a high five and a sigh, rather than with America blowing some stuff up.

The locus of our original outrage — 99,000 Syrians lost in a brutal sectarian war — had almost nothing to do with Assad’s alleged use of WMD. Thus the Syrian violence never could be addressed through even successful negotiations about mostly irrelevant WMD. It would have been as if, at the height of the Rwanda crisis, we had threatened to bomb an RPG depot to force the Hutus and Tutsis to continue with their machetes — then backed off, had an ongoing dialogue with Putin about such dangerous rocketry (as Rwandans continued at it with edged weapons), and called our bluff “non-stylish but smart diplomacy.” Read more…

by IPT News  •  Sep 23, 2013

An Egyptian court has banned the Muslim Brotherhood from operating and ordered that all its assets be seized.

Because the ruling applies to “any organisation derived from it,” the order also could affectthe Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. Brotherhood officials promise to appeal the ruling.
Read more…

Nairobi mall attack death toll rises to 68 amid reports of Israeli rescue role

Assault on Iraq funeral, other attacks kill 96

Muslims kill at least 75, wound 100+ in attack on Christian church in Pakistan

Death toll in northeast Nigeria attack ‘at least 142’

By Matthew M. Hausman

The Oslo Accords have dictated the quest for Arab-Israeli peace since the 1990s, and yet they constitute a profound threat to Israeli sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.  Focused on validating Palestinian peoplehood, the Oslo process came to control the dialogue as if it had been the paradigm from the beginning.  However, at the time of its inception Oslo was only the latest in a succession of resolutional frameworks after San Remo, the League of Nations Mandate, and U.N. Resolution 242, all of which had presumed the historicity of Jewish claims, not the ascendancy of a Palestinian nationalism that did not yet exist. Read more…

Intelligence, International Relations and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz tries to convince the world that Iran is the biggest global threat • The old Middle East is dead, and the new Middle East is not yet here, he insists.

Shlomo Cesana, ISRAEL HAYOM

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Likud minister Yuval Steinitz, who holds the long title of minister of intelligence, international relations and strategic affairs, sits at the Prime Minister’s Office. Perhaps the perspective from there is different than from anywhere else. All attempts to challenge him with questions about his previous capacity as finance minister or to divert his focus from the Iranian threat to other issues failed miserably. His focus never wavered, and he was determined to convince the people that Israel is in danger and that time is running out.
Read more…

No where in his remarks does he comment on Obama’s demand for ’67 border or for a divided Jerusalem. Why not? Not one word of criticism does he utter on Obama’s foreign policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood or on the constraints he placed on Israel regarding attacking Iran. It’s all too lovey dovey. Ted Belman

What follows are excerpts of his parting interview with The Jerusalem Post.

What role have you played during the Syrian crisis?

I’ve been very busy, day and often night. First of all, our role has been informational – finding out the administration’s position, the position of the leaders of both houses of Congress in both parties, getting a sense of American public opinion, gauging the directions taken by the American Jewish community… and then conveying Israel’s perspectives back to those same actors.

When you were asked what Israel wants in Syria, what did you say?

It depends at what point. This is an issue than has gone on for several weeks now, and it has gone through some rather dramatic transformations since it started.
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The alliance between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood is the cornerstone of Obama’s New Middle East policy. His friendship with Erdogan is part of this policy.

Ted Belman (first published Feb 2012)

Dr. Essam Abdallah, an Egyptian liberal intellectual, in an article published last October in the leading liberal pan Arab Elaph, refers to certain reports coming out of Washington:

“These reports reveal the depth of the below-the-surface coordination between the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Jordan. This bloc of regimes and organizations is now becoming the greatest Islamist radical lobby ever to penetrate and infiltrate the White House, Congress, the State Department and the main decision making centers of the US government. All of this is happening at a time when the US government is going through its most strategically dangerous period in modern times because of its need to confront the Iranian Mullahs regime, which is expanding in the Middle East, as well as penetrating the United States, via powerful and influential allies.”

Read more…