By Fern Sidman

NEW YORK (April 13, 2009) — The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists has announced that they will be holding a week long counter-conference in New York City from April 20-24 as a response to the upcoming UN sponsored Durban II conference to he held in Geneva, Switzerland. While the purported agenda of the Durban II conference includes addressing such issues as, “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance,” it appears that the Durban II conference will be a replication of the Durban I conference that was held in 2001. At that notoriously anti-Israel hate fest, both representatives from Israel and the USA walked out in defiance of the libelous propaganda being promulgated against Israel. Besides labeling Israel as an apartheid state, other metaphors reminiscent of Nazi incitement were also extolled.

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by Michael Rubin*

On Apr. 9, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, announced that the Islamic Republic had installed 7,000 centrifuges in its Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The announcement came one day after the U.S. State Department announced it would engage Iran directly in multilateral nuclear talks.

Proponents of engagement with Tehran say dialogue provides the only way forward. Iran’s progress over the past eight years, they say, is a testament to the failure of Bush administration strategy. President Barack Obama, for example, in his Mar. 21 address to the Iranian government and people, declared that diplomacy “will not be advanced by threats. We seek engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… Who didn’t tell the president that the United States does not bow, especially not to the rulers of countries where women are less valuable than sheep? …

- Washington Post, 4/12/2009

Why would an American president bow before a dictator whose country is well-known for its human rights abuses? President Obama did just that: he bowed before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, sending the absolute wrong message to the Arab/Muslim World, that of submission to a part of humanity, “20, 30, 40 and even 50%,” is hostile to the United States and its allies. Not only is Obama kowtowing to a thug, but sweeping the misdeeds of that thug — incitement to violence against the West and massive human rights abuses — under the carpet. Has Obama forgotten that our great nation was founded on the concepts of equal rights for all humans and the rejection of official caste systems?

What happened to Michael Moore’s conspiracy theories about President Bush being too cozy with the Saudis? What has become of Noam Chomsky’s incoherent babbling about invading Afghanistan to build an uber oil pipeline? Why should Mr. Obama receive a free pass for snuggling up to supporters of terrorism like the Saudis?

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by Yücel Güçlü*

The debate over what happened to Armenians in World War I-era Ottoman Anatolia continues to polarize historians and politicians. Armenian historians argue that Ottoman forces killed more than one million Armenians in a deliberate act of genocide.[1] Other historians — most famously Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy — acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died but question whether this was a deliberate act of genocide or rather an outgrowth of fighting and famine.[2] In recent decades, the debate has shifted from academic to legislative grounds. In 2001, the French parliament voted to recognize an Armenian genocide.[3] In 2007, U.S. political leaders narrowly averted an Armenian genocide resolution in the House of Representatives. While Armenian activists lobby politicians to recognize an Armenian genocide formally, which is likely to be a first step toward a demand for collective reparations, and genocide studies scholars seek to close the book on the Armenian narrative, it is ironic that many of the archives that contain documentation from the period remain untapped.

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By Wolfgang G. Schwanitz*

This article discusses the development of German-Kuwaiti relations from the late eighteenth century to the reunification of Germany.^[1]

In 1752, the al-Sabah family from central Arabia established a trading post in the Persian Gulf. Shortly after Sabah bin Jabir was elected as the first emir in 1756, Europeans discovered “the Little Fort.” The German explorer Carsten Niebuhr mapped it as "Koueit" in 1772, referring to it as "A township a three-day trip away" from Zubair.^[2] Another German explorer, Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, mentioned a British trading post there, while geographer Karl Ritter marked Kuwait’s land in 1818.^[3] Travelers also recorded religious conflict in the region, such as disputes in Karbala and Najaf between Shi’a, who had roots in Kuwait, and Sunnis.

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By Barry Rubin

In the Israeli political game, there are some things too important to play with. Has the new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu safeguarded Israel’s security and foreign relations while meeting party and coalition needs, and what is the likely result of this new government’s policies internationally?

Netanyahu had to put together a complex web of parties and personalities to get a Knesset majority. The result is a cabinet with more ministers than Jerusalem has rabbis.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

In recent House hearings dedicated to examining Islamic extremism, I stressed that the fundamental stumbling block to effective policy-making is educational and epistemological. What people are taught about Islam needs a serious overhaul before we can expect to formulate strategies that make sense.

Worth heeding is former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop’s 2006 lament that “the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.”

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By Barry Rubin

It is silly to say that the Pat Oliphant Cartoon in the New York Times and many newspapers around the world is antisemitic.  But it’s also a bad mistake because the cartoon deserves serious analysis to show just how dangerous and wrong it is, in ways that not only hurt Israel but all Western democracies.

You can see the cartoon at this URL:

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20090325/cx_po_uc/po20090325

Let’s deconstruct the cartoon to show the basic ideas that underlie it and that make it lie.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

U.S. President Barack Obama is repeating the same mistakes made by many Western leaders: Refusing to acknowledge in any way that our greatest enemy, radical Islam, is connected to Islam, and believing that making nice with enemies will make them our friends. Just what did Mr. Obama mean today when he said, speaking before the Turkish parliament?:

… the United States is not — and will never be — at war with Islam… In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject but also to strengthen opportunities for all people. …

Who said the U.S. was “at war with Islam?” Certainly not President Bush. Why is Mr. Obama grovelling before the Muslim World, “20, 30, 40 and even 50%” of which is hostile to the West? Islamist homicide bombers use dynamite. Are we at war with dynamite or it with us?

The ruling AKP, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has steadily been moving Turkey towards Islamism, and away from the country’s democratic and secular roots, as created by Kemal Atatürk (see here and here).

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By Jon Feere

Vice President Joe Biden provided some rational commentary on immigration yesterday. And it sure isn’t going to make the amnesty advocates in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus very happy. While speaking to journalists in Costa Rica, the V.P. said the following:

“It’s difficult to tell a constituency while unemployment is rising, they’re losing their jobs and their homes, that what we should do is in fact legalize (illegal immigrants) and stop all deportation.”

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by Daniel Pipes*

Smack on its 60^th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.

Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.

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By Thomas Drewing

I have been doing something politically unordinary since the “Stimulus” Bill became law. My unconventional tactic seems very effective, judging by the reactions that I’ve received from the people who have called me to obtain political contributions. I’m having a bit of fun with it, in that perverse way one sometimes does when things seem bleak, and a little bit of fun can soothe the savage soul. I have deliberately NOT been donating money to Republican organizations.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

There are approximately 15,000 publicly-traded companies/business now active in the U.S. Unfortunately, the business disasters are the ones we hear about in the news more often than we hear of honest companies steadily and carefully executing their business plans. People should not panic despite the doom and gloom constantly emanating from the boob-tube talking heads. There are companies that have already started to make payments on the loans they received from federal bailout funds. For example:

Fifth Third Bancorp has issued a $42.6 million dividend payment to the U.S. Treasury Department. …

Fifth Third is Nashville’s sixth largest bank, with $1.37 billion in deposits locally. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

President Obama said Friday that:

… there was “insidious” anti-Americanism in Europe. He said these attitudes had to change. …

Hear, hear. I’m in absolute agreement. Look at the spoiled-brat, European “demonstrators” vandalizing and burning parts of Strasbourg in “protest” of NATO’s 60th anniversary meeting. I’d bet these vandals would all claim to support world peace — peace through violence? Obama was right to note the malevolence of Europe’s self-hatred, anti-U.S. vitriol, and anti-everything nut cases. But can I take Obama at his word?

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by Tuncay Babalı*

Turkey is increasingly at the crossroads of the world energy trade. Because of tanker traffic through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, Turkey has become an important north-south oil transit route. The Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) natural gas pipelines make Turkey an important east-west route as well. Economic opportunities, however, can present diplomatic liabilities. As the importance of Turkey’s energy sector has grown, Turkey has come under increasing pressure. Turkey finds itself caught between competing U.S. and Russian interests as a result of the August 2008 Georgia conflict. Turkish-Iranian energy trade has also brought Washington’s ire down on Turkey. Turkey’s efforts to minimize problems with its neighbors may make it popular with some, but it has led others to question the strength of the U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership. Analysis of Ankara’s options show that it has little choice besides greater caution and engagement, and that energy concerns rather than a reassessment of its Western ties motivate its outreach to Russia and, to a certain extent, Iran.

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