Commentary Magazine

Posts For: January 22, 2012

Re: Assassination Fantasies Beyond the Pale

| @alanagoodman 01.22.2012 - 3:46 PM

Jonathan’s prediction that Andrew Adler’s disgraceful Obama assassination fantasy will be used to smear critics of the president’s Israel policy couldn’t have been more prescient. Here’s Yossi Gurvitz at 972 Magazine taking the first shot at the strawman:

The vast majority of American Jews will feel nothing but horror at Adler’s sick fantasy. Most of them would shudder at the idea of betraying their country like Jonathan Pollard did. A small number of them are, however, “Israel-firsters”: They put Israel’s interests – or, to be more precise, Greater Israel’s interest – ahead of their country’s. You can spot them easily: They generally doth protest too much about the usage of “Israel-firsters.”

Of course. Because if you didn’t secretly have a primary allegiance to Israel, why else would you possibly object to people saying you do?

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The Islamist Winter and Middle East Peace

| @tobincommentary 01.22.2012 - 1:48 PM

Anyone inclined to be sanguine about the future of Palestinian politics need only read the latest report by the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh to understand that the threat of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank is real. The Fatah-Hamas unity agreement concluded last year may not yet have been consummated but, as Abu Toameh writes, even Fatah officials are starting to understand that if they allow another election, the Islamists may take control of all of the territories just as their Muslim Brotherhood allies have done in Egypt. According to Abu Toameh, Fatah officials are now openly expressing worry about the outcome of these elections, assuming they are held in May as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has promised.

No one should be holding their breath waiting for Abbas to make good on that pledge. Given that he is in now about to start the 8th year of the four-year-term to which he was elected in 2005, Abbas’s idea of democracy is limited to elections that he thinks he’ll win. Yet the pact he signed with Hamas last year is an indication he believes he cannot govern indefinitely without the protection of the radical terrorist group. That’s a piece of intelligence that should inform not only Fatah, but those in the United States that are urging Israel to make further concessions to the Palestinians in the vain hope they will finally agree to make peace.

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Assassination Fantasies Beyond the Pale

| @tobincommentary 01.22.2012 - 12:13 PM

It is difficult to know how exactly to classify a recent column published in the Atlanta Jewish Times that, unbelievably, listed the assassination of President Obama, as one of Israel’s options in dealing with the threat of nuclear attack from Iran. But whether you term it over-the-top criticism of Obama or a case of non-ideological idiocy, it is the sort of thing that all people of good will, no matter what they think of the president’s policies, must condemn in the harshest possible terms. The vile canard that Israel would ever consider such a thing is the sort of thing we might expect to see in an anti-Semitic publication rather than one that serves a Jewish community. The author of the piece, the paper’s publisher Andrew Adler, has apologized but he still ought to be forced to step down from his position.

But whatever Adler’s fate turns out to be — and he will be having some rather uncomfortable conversations with the Secret Service — there will be those who will try to use his absurd article to prove that President Obama’s Jewish detractors are so deranged by hatred for him that they are willing to say or write anything. Indeed, we should expect Adler’s stupidity to be a frequent theme employed by apologists for the president who will seek to discredit all of those who argue that Obama’s policies are potentially harmful to Israel. Democrats who try to associate all of Obama critics with Adler will be wrong. But the Atlanta outrage should also serve as a reminder to those who rightly take the president to task that their comments must remain within the bounds of civility and fact.

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South Carolina Proves Conservatives Are Far From Finished

| @tobincommentary 01.22.2012 - 10:56 AM

For the past few months we’ve been hearing a lot in the mainstream media about the demise of the Tea Party and conservative Republicans in general. After their triumph in 2010 the Tea Party’s influence was supposed to have peaked last summer during the debt ceiling crisis. The failure of presidential candidates who openly identified with the movement such as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry was seen as evidence of their not being able to even influence the GOP. But yesterday’s big victory in the South Carolina primary by Newt Gingrich is a clear indication that conservatives are still calling the tune in the Republican Party and anyone who thinks their concerns can be ignored or swept to the side is mistaken.

Gingrich won because, unlike Mitt Romney, he was able to tap into the genuine anger that conservatives in this country feel for President Obama and his cheerleaders in the liberal media echo chamber. While Gingrich’s claim to be the true conservative in the race is highly questionable, there is no question that he was the best at articulating the same fervor that helped galvanize Tea Party sentiment and sweep the last midterm elections. If Romney hopes to keep Gingrich’s latest comeback from gaining enough momentum to deny him the GOP nomination, he is going to have to find a way to convince conservatives that he is not merely a technocrat who understands the economy but a man who understands and can articulate their core beliefs. In other words, not only is the Tea Party’s moment not in the past, it is still very much the future of the Republican Party.

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