By Andrew L. Jaffee

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence — and knowledge of realpolitik — could’ve predicted that Jimmy Carter’s plea to Hamas terrorists to recognize Israel was doomed to failure. In fact, before Carter met with Hamas leaders, an attempt was made to assassinate the former president by Palestinian terrorists — possibly “Hamas extremists linked to Al Qaeda,” no less. Ah, dear Jimmy, you being “a chief defender of the U.S.-designated terror group [Hamas],” what have you been smoking? Here are the results of Carter’s silly, civilian attempts at “diplomacy” with terrorists, from the AP:

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by Daniel Pipes*

A cold war is “the key to understanding the Middle East in the 21^st century.” So argue Yigal Carmon and three of his colleagues at the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) in a recent study, “An Escalating Regional Cold War.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jimmy Carter has made a business out of apologizing for Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas. Today, while visiting Gaza, some Palestinian nut-cases — possibly “Hamas extremists linked to Al Qaeda” — tried blow up Carter. Some thanks these terrorists have for Carter’s “pro-Palestinian” activities. Yet Jimmy foolishly spent the day trying to “persuade Hamas to accept the West’s three conditions for engaging the group: renouncing violence, recognizing Israel and accepting previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements — all of which Hamas has refused to do.” AND, Carter is so deluded that he refused to believe he was targeted today — despite the evidence.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner? That’s a key question in Iran’s disputed presidential election. International polling experts and Iran analysts said the speed of the vote count, coupled with a lack of detailed election data normally released by officials, was fueling suspicion around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory. …

AP, 6/15/2009

Doi… Good question with an obvious answer: Dictatorial election fraud perpetrated once again by Iran’s Islamist theocracy. Remember that Iran’s Orwellian “Supreme Leader” can disregard/override/cancel anything parliament or the president decides. But the country’s population isn’t swallowing this ugly exercise in pretend democracy. According to the AFP:

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian opposition demonstrators fill the squares between Revolution and Freedom (background) in support of defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Tehran. A protestor was reportedly shot dead by police in Tehran as massive crowds of people defied a ban to stage a rally against the disputed re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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By Barry Rubin

Many Western analysts and journalists are treating the stolen election in Iran as something of no international significance. After all, they say, it is only an internal matter. Why should it affect Western attempts to engage with the Islamist regime?

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by David Bukay*

In 1975, Freedom House ranked only 25 percent of the world’s countries to be “politically free.” Three decades later, the proportion had increased to 46 percent, with 122 electoral democracies.[1] Democracy may have taken root in Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and much of sub-Saharan Africa, but the Middle East has largely been left behind. Except for Israel, Middle Eastern countries have long histories of authoritarianism, influenced by both culture and religion. In modern years, this has manifested itself in the rise, if not of direct military rule, then of states supported by militaries focused more on inward threats than on external enemies. Middle Eastern militaries, whether in Algeria, Egypt, or Turkey, have served as the main bulwark against the spread or empowerment of Islamists. However, Western policymakers must prepare for the day that the regional militaries will switch sides, casting their lot with Islamists rather than more secular autocrats.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police in the heart of Iran’s capital Saturday, pelting them with rocks and setting fires in the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. They accused the hard-line president of using fraud to steal election victory from his reformist rival. …

AP, 6/13/09

A “2-to-1 landslide for Ahmadinejad?” I doubt it, and obviously many Iranians do to, as they are willing to go up against the notorious Islamist security apparatus, which has kept the mullah’s in power since 1979’s “revolution.” Here’s how the “authorities” dealt with protesters today:

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Though he early indicated that this would be an honest, heart-to-heart talk — “we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors” and “let me speak as clearly and plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together” — Obama did not follow through.

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By Barry Rubin

The United States demands that Israel stop construction on settlements. If this doesn’t happen, it hints at dire retaliation.

If Israel agrees to this step, President Barack Obama promises great things. First, he claims this will bring dramatic progress toward Israel-Palestinian peace.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The heart and the head sometimes go in different directions, and they do for me today as Iranians go to the polls to vote in their country’s semi-legitimate presidential elections.

Many problems afflict those elections – including restrictions on who may run for president, what issues may be discussed, and the accuracy of electoral results – but the most important limitation concerns the powers of the president, who is conspicuously not the country’s most powerful politician.

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By Ahron Horovitz
Reviewed by Fern Sidman

For those who will be traveling to Israel for the first time, and even for veteran tourists, there is no doubt that the holy city of Jerusalem, in all its resplendent majesty, continues to be a focal point of any journey. Jerusalem is known as “the center of the world” and as such is steeped in thousands of years of rich and vibrant religious history. Because each tourist desires a visit that is rife with powerful personal meaning along with a lifetime of vivid memories, then Ahron Horowitz’s new book entitled, “Jerusalem: Footsteps Through Time: Ten Torah Study Tours of the Old City” (Feldheim Publishers) is simply indispensable.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi has published what it claims are key details of the new Middle East peace plan to be presented by President Obama in his speech in Cairo on June 4. Details of the plan made the front page of two leading Israeli newspapers.

If the revelations prove accurate, they reveal a US administration as yet unacquainted with several basic facts of life concerning politics and strategy in the Middle East.

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by David Capezza*

Analysts generally consider military influence in politics and society to be a critical impediment to the development of democratic political and civil rights and freedoms. According to Freedom House, for example, greater military involvement in government politics decreases civil liberties and political rights in any given country; this infringes on a government’s ability to develop democracy.[1]

Turkey may be an exception. The military has deep roots in society, and its influence predates the founding of the republic. But rather than hinder democratization, Turkey’s military remains an important component in the checks and balances that protect Turkish democracy. Herein lies an irony: European officials have made diminishment of military influence a key reform in Turkey’s European Union accession process. This may be a noble goal, but by insisting on dismantling the military role in Turkish society without advancing a new mechanism to guarantee the constitution, well-meaning reformers may actually undercut the stability of Turkey as a democracy.

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By Barry Rubin

Although somewhat quieted by the successful Netanyahu-Obama meeting, a predominant theme in current talk about U.S. Middle East policy is that there will soon be a U.S.-Israel confrontation. This is so expected that there are daily misinterpretations or fabrications of events implying some anti-Israel step by the Obama administration.

Such things might well-almost inevitably will-happen at some point. But by the end of May 2009, there had still been no material action hostile to Israel undertaken by the administration.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Barack Obama’s mention of “seven million American Muslims” in the course of his rambling and complex six-thousand-word address to the Muslim world from Cairo symbolizes the whole message.

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