Column One: Checkmating Obama

Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

Obama at the Western Wall

Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Lobbying the administration is pointless. Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

Before turning to what Israel must do, first we need to understand what Israel can do.

A good place to begin is by considering what just transpired at UNESCO, where twice in a week, UNESCO bodies resolved to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The fight that Israel waged at UNESCO is not the fight it needs to wage at the Security Council. The stakes at the Security Council are far higher.

Like the UN General Assembly, UNESCO’s decisions are non-binding declarations that have no legal or operational significance. As such, there is no reason to expend great resources to fight them. For Israel, the goal of the fight at UNESCO is not to defeat anti-Israel initiatives. That is impossible given the Palestinians’ automatic majority.

The purpose of the fight at UNESCO is to humiliate European governments that side with antisemitic initiatives, and to weaken the congenitally anti-Israel body itself.

The government achieved both of these objectives. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s disavowal of his own government’s abstention from the vote on the first resolution – like the similar position taken after the fact by the Mexican government – was a diplomatic victory for Israel.

So too, the fact that UNESCO’s own Secretary-General Irina Bukova felt compelled to disavow her own agency’s actions by rejecting the resolution’s denial of the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem was a significant victory for Israel. Her statement was deeply damaging for UNESCO and its reputation.

Finally, the fact that Tanzania and the Philippines voted against the resolution was a testament to Israel’s capacity to convince other governments to abandon their traditional pro-Palestinian voting pattern.

The Palestinians won the vote at UNESCO because they are more powerful diplomatically than Israel. They have an automatic anti-Israel majority. But they weren’t empowered by their victory. To the contrary. They were bloodied by it.

In a sign of their weakening hold on member nations, the Palestinians and Jordanians felt compelled to send a threatening letter to the members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee lest they dare to vote against the resolution. Powerful players don’t make threats. They don’t need to.

Israel’s experience at UNESCO teaches us that there are governments that are open to counteroffers. Israel doesn’t need to hide in America’s shadow. It is capable of working on its own to blunt the impact of the Palestinians’ automatic majority. And it will need to use all of its resources to fend off a US-backed assault at the Security Council.

Unlike UNESCO, the Security Council can pass legally binding resolutions. Israel needs to be prepared to bring all of its resources to bear to prevent such a resolution from being adopted against it. Obama’s intention to abandon Israel at the Security Council means that Israel comes to this battle severely hobbled.

But there is one advantage to the US’s betrayal.

Over the years, Israel’s ability to trust the US to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council was been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the US has secured Israel from diplomatic assaults. But on the other hand, our ability to trust Washington has made us diplomatically lazy and ineffective.

Safe in Washington’s shadow, we have behaved as through all diplomacy is public diplomacy. That is, we have pretended that statecraft begins and ends with making the moral or strategic case for our side against the other guys.

But public diplomacy is just one diplomatic tool.

The Syrian regime, for instance, has no moral case for securing international support. Bashar Assad didn’t convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to support him by arguing that he is better than alternative regimes. He bought Putin’s support by offering him permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

Then there is Morocco, another weak state with no public diplomacy case to make. Last March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outraged Rabat when he acknowledged the plain fact that Western Sahara, which Morocco occupies, is “occupied territory.”

Morocco quickly secured the support of Spain and France and launched an all-out onslaught against Ban. How did Morocco manage?

Morocco’s most powerful diplomatic resource is its control over migration flows from North Africa to Europe. Anytime it wishes, Rabat can open the migratory floodgates just as easily as it can keep them shut. And the French and Spanish know it.

In less than a month, Ban issued repeated abject apologies.

Game. Set. Match. Morocco.

From reports to date, it appears that shortly after the US elections on November 8, the Malaysians or Egyptians will submit a Palestinian-backed resolution that defines Israeli communities in united Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as illegal. If the resolution is brought to a vote, the US will fail to veto it.

Such a resolution, or a resolution obligating Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, would cause Israel grave harm.

So what resources does Israel have to prevent this from happening?

Of course, we have public diplomacy. And that might work with some friendly nations. But it won’t get us over the top. We need to learn from the Syrian and Moroccan examples and consider what we have to offer Security Council members in exchange for their support in scuttling the approaching onslaught against us.

One such resource is the US Congress. Israel’s allies in Congress are sickened by the Obama administration’s devastating Middle East policies. A solid majority of lawmakers can be trusted to support actions that will reinforce Israel’s position.

Israel has other resources as well that we can trade on. We have natural gas. And we have technologies that the governments of the world require to surmount the challenges of the 21 century. There is no reason to give these resources away when we can trade them for diplomatic support.

As for the Palestinians, as the UNESCO vote showed, they are less popular now than at any time in the past 40 years. All they have to offer is threats and antisemitism. Both are powerful weapons.

But they are no longer invincible.

Israel’s goal must be to use our resources at the Security Council in a manner that will make it impossible for Obama to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass.

A method for achieving this goal has two components. The first component is to convince a friendly country on the Security Council to propose a balanced resolution that would counter the Palestinian-backed Israel-bashing one.

Such a resolution could include four points. First, it could deplore efforts to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Second, it can condemn the PA/PLO for their continued unlawful funding of terrorists.

Third, it can urge Israel to restrain settlement construction in areas that in previous negotiations have been identified as likely territory for a future Palestinian state.

Fourth, it can call on Israel and the PA to reinstate negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Israel has friendly ties with a few Security Council members, among them Uruguay and New Zealand. In the final weeks of the Obama era, it is possible that Israel will be able to convince one of them to submit a balanced resolution along these lines.

Obama would be hard-pressed to oppose such a resolution in favor of one that singles Israel out for rebuke.

But that still is insufficient. Obama can make Uruguay and New Zealand a better offer if he wishes.

And so we move to the second aspect of the plan.

If we learn nothing else from the Obama era, we must recognize that the time has come for Israel to stop sufficing with just one Security Council veto. Most states have several. And we need a few more.

Russia today is the best place to start our search for a second veto.

Putin is a dealmaker. As his agreement with Assad showed, he is willing to consider attractive offers. Obviously, Israel won’t offer Russia bases. But we do have other things to offer Putin in exchange for a veto.

For instance, in exchange for a Russian veto at the Security Council, Israel can offer Putin to lobby the US Congress to cancel US sanctions against Russia over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Israel has no dog in that fight. And the sanctions are not getting the US anywhere.

Putin might go for the deal for two reasons. First, by stepping into the breach and defending Israel against Obama, he will humiliate Obama.

Second, if Israel succeeds with the Congress, he will reap economic rewards.

For his part, Putin wouldn’t even have to openly side with Israel. All he would have to do is announce that in the interests of regional stability, Russia will not support an unbalanced resolution on Israel and the Palestinians.

If Putin supports a balanced resolution, Obama will be checkmated. His plan to take revenge on Israel for not following him off the strategic cliff will be foiled. Israel will have survived his presidency.

None of this will be easy. And success is far from assured. There are many more ways for Israel to fail than succeed. Our diplomatic weakness remains a millstone around our neck. But as the UNESCO resolutions showed, attacking Israel is no longer cost free. We are not powerless in the grip of circumstances. We have cards to play.

And now is the time to play them for all they are worth.

October 28, 2016 | 46 Comments »

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46 Comments / 46 Comments

  1. Austin Said:

    enigma”.

    The Presidential Champagne has become toooo ridiculous to be an “enigma”. Plain old corruption.

    ” Oh what dreadful web we weave when first we practice to deceive”. Wm. Shakespeare

  2. @ honeybee:
    Your paradox could be a Churchill’s “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”…..yes I think that was it. or was it “inside a conundrum”…..maybe “enigma”.

  3. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    um to addendum on things turning into their opposites: And how on earth did the Republican party not only become known as the party championing workers and fighting big business and for greater accountability, transparency and ethics in government but under the leadership of a NY Real Estate Baron??? Ha Ha Ha. It’s hilarious, if you think about it, you know?*

    Gilbert & Sullivan !!! A paradox . a paradox a most amusing paradox.

  4. @ honeybee:
    Interesting. 5 years later, in 1840, on the other side of the world, this event marked the beginnings of international Jewish political solidarity which later gave birth to political Zionism.

    Arab/Muslim Anti-Semitism:
    The Damascus Blood Libel
    (1840)

    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/damascus.html

    I might add, that the Rothschild family played a leading role. I didn’t really understand some of the early comments that seemed to disparage them, but I didn’t approve. And I don’t approve of Israel renaming Rothschild Street, Innovation Street or blvd. or something.

  5. addendum to addendum on things turning into their opposites: And how on earth did the Republican party not only become known as the party championing workers and fighting big business and for greater accountability, transparency and ethics in government but under the leadership of a NY Real Estate Baron??? Ha Ha Ha. It’s hilarious, if you think about it, you know?*
    Hillary wants to attack Russia because she blames Wikileaks revelations on them. It’s the revelations themselves that these people hate. About their own corruption. This is “the cyber-war” on America they speak of. As the British author, I cited, who didn’t disupte that said, “not enough. step it up Dmitri.”
    I recently read that Daniel Ellsberg has joined forces with Julian Assange. Somebody should ask Hillary: “What do you think about the “Pentagon Papers” Hillary? Was it treason? Should we have punished Vietnam for it (during the Vietnam War). Should we have bombed Moscow?
    What’s her name, the former dem House Majority Leader, paid tribute to General Giap, the leader of the North Vietnamese Forces when he died, on behalf of San Francisco, probably one of the sanctuary cities Trump will cut Federal funding to. Yay!

    OP FOR OCTOBER 5, 2013 In Memoriam: Vo Nguyen Giap, Admitted US ‘Almost Won’ Vietnam War In 1975
    Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/10/vietnam-war-winning/#ixzz4OTQtl8NI


    *Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

  6. @ stevenl:
    Very true. Everything Obama has done has consistently contributed to the weakening of America. Go to Discover the Networks http://discoverthenetworks.com/ and Look up many of the people he appointed – radicals, like himself, with a long history of anti-U.S. pro (whoever we are fighting this week). His Green Energy Czar was a Maoist. His Defense Secretary was a guy who had run a pro-Soviet lobbying group calling for unilateral disarmament during the cold war; we now have a skeleton force but are playing chicken with Russia, while Iran and ISIS thumb their noses at us, as Trump points out, and Clinton, every in LaLa Land, denies. Wendy Sherman, the chief negotiator of the Iran deal was one of the negotiators involved in the botched negotiations with N. Korea that led to that country getting the bomb (they conveniently blamed it on the change of administration — the talks under Bush I – and emphasize that she was not the chief negotiator.
    Look at his own background. Why people would con themselves, that just because somebody puts on a tie, so to speak, they have changed their outlook. Only the strategy changed. But, you know, it used to matter more than it does now. Back in the day, there were differences between different kinds of liberals and different kinds of Leftist. Now there’s just differences between different kinds of Conservatives. It almost doesn’t matter that Obama is a Muslim with a radical New Left background. Hillary, Biden, Kerry, they all have their own stories. But, they are all leaders of what David Horowitz has aptly referred to as the “Atom Bomb Party” that the Dems have morphed into. It’s so weird. How and why did this monolithic “Progressive” movement — so unlike any other in history — begin? Has anybody examined this?

    Addendum: How did Leftist states become Blue and and Conservative States become Red. And when did the Left become bigger foes of Russia, then the Right? Sometimes Marx was right. He said two things. a) History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. b) Unity of opposites: things turn into their opposites. Though to be fair, he got this from Hegel who, in turn, undoubtedly got it from ancient Indian Buddhist scriptures which are dialectical. One of the “bibles” of the wing of the New Age Movement I was brought up in (which I still subscribe to, believe it or not) was “The Tao of Physics” by a physicist named Fritjof Capra. “The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism” – https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels-Mysticism/dp/1590308352

  7. @ babushka:
    Grant (Archibald Leech) was NOT Jewish. Later in life, after long years’ dealings with Jewish Hollywood machers, he once said that “I consider myself partly Jewish”. But there is NO Yiddishkeit in his background at all. Maybe his grandfather had a quickie with a quarter Jewish girl, or maybe it was his grandmother. Nobody really knows anything about him. His background was very obscure. What we’re told has got to be a concoction of the Hollywood PR guys. I prefer to read in-depth several years research like the one I read years ago and that particular remark of his was convincingly debunked. I recall that he had a particular reason for occasionally saying it, because of the context of the conversations, and the company.

    By the way, did anyone here ever notice his peculiar speaking accent. It seemed to me that he has a sort of speech impediment, rather like “chewing” his words..

  8. @ honeybee:
    @ honeybee:

    That must have been a series of great experiences for your uncle. He should have noted down whatever he remembered she said, and how she conducted herself as specifically as possible. That would have been something to hand down in a family from generation to generation. I think so anyway. She was unique.

    When I was very young, our servants were talking about Mae West. Ireland generally, in those days, would see a film which was already 4-5-6 years old by the time it got there. I can recall, almost as a baby, brought by my older sister to a movie, which was actually silent.

    The astonishing thing about West was that the general public had never seen her except when she began to make movies. Although well known through the newspapers, nobody really had seen her except American theatregoers. And I lived in Ireland where she was all the rage.

    Just imagine… a world icon known mainly through her movies, who made her first movie when well over 40 years old. More than astonishing.

  9. @ pinchas baram:
    Since, we are so culturally amnesiac and balkanized – I have met Americans who have never heard of Marlon Brando — and since Caroline Glick included a “Godfather” reference at the beginning of her perceptive article, I reposted the humorous Godfather spoof so that anyone would know that when I said “We (meaning Israel) should make them (meaning the nations of the Security Council) an offer they cannot refuse (it means I am advocating twisting their arms covertly mafia-style). It is a famous line, but no doubt it would go over the heads of many. I do agree that non-topical movie and other references are inappropriate except where somebody has combined erroneous assertions on irrelevant topics with statements slamming Trump or playing into the Dems red herring strategy with regard to the Islamic invasion. In discrediting that which can be discredited, the rest goes. But, yes, there is too much idle chit-chat among us old farts. Humor is valid when it is a weapon, young whippersnapper. And there’s no weapon like it.

  10. are these talkbacks becoming more and more a place for old farts to shmooze about old movies, etc., which have nothing to do with the article under review? the answer is yes, obviously. Ted, without being a censor, can you please set some guidelines? otherwise, your website will literally fall apart.

  11. @ birdalone:
    As Trump said about Mosul. Let’s not tell the enemy exactly what we will or could do, eh? The devils in the details. Why do the enemies’ homework for them.

  12. For instance, in exchange for a Russian veto at the Security Council, Israel can offer Putin to lobby the US Congress to cancel US sanctions against Russia over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

    Apologies to Caroline Glick, but that dog don’t hunt. Israel should NOT lobby USCongress on anything Putin – difficult to find any member of Congress, especially in the GOP, who thinks Putin should be rewarded/appeased for any reason.

    I believe Russia would veto any such UNSC resolution solely to thwart Obama, but also to maintain good relations with Israel and all those immigrants from the former Soviet Union, which caused a bit of a brain drain.

    If none of permanent five exercise a veto, resolutions face a vote of the entire 15-member Security Council, and need nine more votes to adopt such resolution.

    Considering the membership, best to work on THOSE votes:
    (term date):
    Angola (2016)
    Egypt (2017)
    Japan (2017)
    Malaysia (2016)
    New Zealand (2016)
    Senegal (2017)
    Spain (2016)
    Ukraine (2017)
    Uruguay (2017)
    Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) (2016)

  13. @ honeybee:

    As for me, I decided to fiddle while Rome burns.

    You have to find a way to work that into a pro-Trump and Israel anti-Hillary/Muslim promo: Tell us some stories about how your first graders heroically fought off Hezbollah and that’s why we need a wall. Even better if you can work the Alamo in, somehow. That’s your schtick. Work it!

    Red Dawn Trailer (1984)
    https://youtu.be/1_I4WgBfETc

  14. @ honeybee:
    I’m a musician. In this neck of the woods, I never would have been able to complete post-graduate education as a conservative. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/there-are-conservative-professors-just-not-in-these-states.html?_r=0

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201202/is-there-liberal-bias-among-american-professors

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html

    “The Campus Blacklist
    By: David Horowitz
    FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 18, 2003

    The most successful and pervasive blacklist in American history is the blacklist of conservatives on American college campuses, their marginalization in undergraduate life and their virtual exclusion from liberal arts faculties, particularly those that deal with the study of society itself. Because it is a blacklist enforced by academics, there has been no academic study of the problem. Consequently, the evidence regarding its mode of operation and the extent of its impact is anecdotal or confined to research that is incomplete. Nonetheless, its reality is undeniable.”

    http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18634

    As for marriage, are you suggesting anything is possible through nepotism? Who do you think I am, Hillary Clinton?

    Eddie Cantor Kid Millions Preview Clip
    https://youtu.be/uh1bSUpFwj8

    Dracula’s Wives Awaken – Bela Lugosi (1931)
    https://youtu.be/YSmSuiMNbDI

  15. @ honeybee:
    Kishinev, The Shoah, the Crown Heights Pogrom, Unesco, Oslo, UNESCO denying the Jewish Connection to Jerusalem, to the Temple: all products of bogus history. Ask any leftist what who their “Lenin” is. What their bible is. It’s Noam Chomsky.

    To the comment that bogus history is the best kind of history, even as a joke. My response is simple:

    Feh!

    As for waiting tables as a result of being a history major? You’re not far off. I got off the Leftist gravy train (though I was a Leftist out of passion not opportunism). There’s no room for us.

    Dionne Warwick – There’s A Place For Us (against the accompaniment for the Jets song brilliant Jazz version, 1960s television) – West Side Story
    https://youtu.be/Ow4_VGKJ44Y

    Woody in ‘The Front’
    https://youtu.be/8t-g2HMBklk

  16. @ babushka:
    Did you actually read anything you are quoting? There’s nothing there that suggests it was anything but an unsubstantiated rumor from unknown or un-cited sources. One of them cites the previous source I just debunked. The one other link that claims to be a biography (an internet biography, whatever that means) gives me a “site un-available” message.

    One of the courses I took as an undergraduate history major was a graduate course on checking citations. It’s amazing, how often even real historians (there are none here) cite things that turn out to be bogus or that even say the opposite of the argument they are trying to support.

    The Wikipedia article says he considered himself to be partly Jewish. Well, he was. His father was part Jewish. That doesn’t actually make him Jewish, but it’s enough for some people. I have a blond haired blue eyed friend who identifies as Cherokee because one of her great-grandparents was Cherokee. Fine. Whatever floats your boat. As long as people like us and support us against our enemies. But, a Jew is a child of a Jewish mother or a convert – if the mother is a convert, then the child is a Jew if she converted before the child was born. Got it. Good.
    It’s a grey area whether the Nazis would have murdered him for having one Jewish grandparent on either side. They went back and forth on that. I think they just decided it would be simpler to kill everybody towards the end.

  17. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    babushka Said:

    You are also wrong about Mae West. And everything else. Interact with the flying bug. Your ineptitude bores me.

    And for the above you forsook me, Sugar Pie. You’ll get no honey from Babs. She just fit you for an iron bed.

  18. @ babushka:
    Did you look at any reviews of this book? Here’s one.

    …The authors make so many statements that don’t appear to have come from any particular source (or, certainly, they don’t name them) yet feel they can make “fly on the wall” comments like: “She (Virginia Cherrill, now divorced from Grant) appeared at social event after social event, escorted by a number of eligible bachelors. But she was devoted and faithful to her husband….” Says who?

    And yet they also ask questions for which no answers are supplied. When talking about Grant’s association with Countess Dorothy di Frasso during the Second World War, when Grant allegedly was working for British Intelligence, they ask (but don’t elucidate further: “Was he only pretending to support the Countess, while in fact really investigating her and her activities?”

    Then there are bizarre sentences like, “Utterly professional always, Cary fought his way through the work, only occasionally breaking into an uncontrollable rage when he could take the strain no longer.” Huh? Do the authors not see the irony of using “utterly professional” and “uncontrollable rage” in the same sentence? Nor am I sure we can take this “utterly professional” claim with anything but a pinch of salt when in previous and future pages, Grant is reported to have sulked during the filming of The Bishop’s Wife, and on the first day of shooting An Affair to Remember apparently refused to work until the buttons on the officers’ uniforms “were corrected.” And these are just two incidents — of many…http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1350218264

    I said, “you know what I mean” to refer the incorrect form of quotation blockings being in the wrong place.

  19. You know what I mean

    An unreasonable assumption, given that you don’t know what you mean.

    Grant’s elder brother, John William Elias Leach (1899 –1900), died of tuberculous meningitis. Grant considered himself to have been partly Jewish. https://www.google.com/#q=cary+grant+jewish

    rom “Appendix: Family” in “Cary Grant – An Internet Biography”, written August 1996, last revised August 2002 (URL: http://www.zoe73.net/cg/app_family.htm; viewed 3 May 2005):

    Higham and Moseley [Higham, Charles and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (London: New English Library)] believe that Elsie was not Archie’s biological mother and that his true mother, Lillian, worked as a seamstress in Todd’s Clothing Factory – where Elias Leach also worked. She was of Jewish parentage, which might help to explain why Cary sometimes claimed he was Jewish.http://www.adherents.com/people/pg/Cary_Grant.html

    You are also wrong about Mae West. And everything else. Interact with the flying bug. Your ineptitude bores me.

  20. @ babushka:
    babushka Said:

    I knew Adam and Eve personally, and had they realized that insects would one day infest the internet they would have burned the Garden of Eden to the ground.

    I will take it that you concede the point.

  21. I knew Adam and Eve personally, and had they realized that insects would one day infest the internet they would have burned the Garden of Eden to the ground.

  22. @ babushka:
    babushka Said:

    Grant was Jewish

    I googled the question: “Was Cary Grant Jewish?” and this came up:

    The start, for Cary Grant, was a long way from what he became. Born Archibald Leach in 1904 in Bristol, England, he was the only child of a possessive mother and a withdrawn father. … His father was part Jewish, a pants-presser for a garment manufacturer, and his mother came from modest origins as well. Here’s the link that was attached: http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/in-memory-cary-grant-1904-1986.

    And, I when I googled the question, “Were Mae West and Cary Grant lovers” I got this quote:

    And even Mae West, who had helped to establish his reputation as a virile leading man, reportedly said in private: “He never came up to see me, not even some time.”

    from this article: http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/243876/Why-Cary-Grant-was-happy-to-be-called-gay

    Your batting 100 today. Maybe you should re-research what you think you know about Mr. Trump.

    I see the quote highlights got all mixed up. I’m no good with computer formulas so I’ll leave it. You know what I mean.

  23. Mae West claimed to have discovered Cary Grant. It wasn’t hard to do, given that he was sleeping next to her. But after having her way with him, she cast him as her costar. Grant was Jewish, and Mae loved Jewish men.

    And Gentile men.

  24. @ Austin:
    I’m glad to see that someone else remembers Mae West, besides me

    ‘Tenks. And see my relevant response to Honeybee asking for clarification.

  25. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    “Is that a gun, or are you just glad to see me.”

    I had this written before, but something happened and it all disappeared. THis time…mit Mazal..

    I’m glad to see that someone else remembers Mae West, besides me. I thought her movies were merely vehicles for her collection of quips, nothing to write home about, but she was exceedingly humourous herself, although always full of double entendres .

    I recall in “Go West Young Man” in which she gave Randolph Scott his first big chance, she said…” lie down here and give yourself a re-laxative’…

    That she wrote everything herself, and was more or less a one woman movie crew, was nothing less than genius.

    I once had a girl-friend who moved around suggestively, but unconsciously,
    something like West, I was very keen on her for a long time….. but alas…

  26. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    “Is that a gun, or are you just glad to see me.”

    I\m happy to see that someone other than me remembers Mae West, which I do vividly. He movies were’s much, but her ad-libbing (carefully scripted I read) and her general savoire faire were unattainable by anyone before or since.

    In one of her movies in which she had Randolph Scott giving him his first big start) She said…”lie down over here and give yourself a re-laxative”….all the time moving in place as she always did. I one had a girl friend who unconsciously did the same thing. I was crazy about her.

  27. Brilliant article. First time I’ve ever seen a typo in her work. I mean this isn’t a blog. She’s senior editor at a major newspaper.

    Over the years, Israel’s ability to trust the US to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council was been a mixed blessing

    In fact, I would (and have) taken this argument one step further. The international community passed humanitarian exceptions to the sanctions on Iraq, called “Oil for Food’ or something, as I recall. Saddam Hussein was able to exploit this program to get around the sanctions by bribing specific individuals in pivotal positions in agencies in countries that controlled the vote.
    Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
    So, whenever somebody puts a gun to Israel’s head, whoever is speaking for Israel and the Jewish people should be able (I hope that ambassador or Prime Minister can do a reasonable Mae West impersonation) to say: “Is that a gun, or are you just glad to see me.”

    [On a side-note, It has occurred to me that if they want to send cops into the equivalent of Beirut with reason to fear for their lives, to avoid jumping-the-gun shootings, they either need to hire cops with that kind of sense of humor, or a Kung Fu grandmaster who doesn’t need a gun (and be willing to pay for that level of skill – you get what you pay for.)

    Even in that case, they would have the choice of whether to add the humor: Jackie Chan or Jet Li. Hmmmm! I suppose Donnie Yen would be a compromise. I wonder if that would work in the international arena?]

    From memory: “But Godafader, the powerful Johnson Family gives 26 favors.”
    “That’s flavors, stupid!.” –
    Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Godfather / But Don’t Ask Original recording
    Joe Lauer (Performer), The Crazy Gang (Performer) Format: Vinyl
    https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Always-Wanted-about-Godfather/dp/B002I028LE

    aaah, here it is:
    Everything you always wanted to know about the Godfather LP 1972

    Have a Listen:
    https://vimeo.com/18218796

  28. @ babushka:
    Now you’re talking my language and thinking my thoughts, BB.

    Even if Trump wins the US presidential election, which I fervently support, Israel should dilute — if not evaporate — its dependency upon the USA, and take all possible steps to harden Israeli control over all the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

    And as part of those steps, withdraw all recognition and cooperation with the Fatah-controlled Palestine Authority, transferring that recognition to the various hamulas that dominate all the Area A Arab cities, with each such agreement separately negotiated.

    As for the Gaza strip, the time will come when Hamas once again attacks Israel. This time, Zahal should be sent in to break up their show, and this time annex the Gush Katif coastline which will break up the strip into two parts in order to facilitate easier control of both parts. Divide and conquer works as well in the 21st century as it did for the Romans of the 1st century.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  29. Obama might well act like Michael Corleone, but there is no need for Israel to be Fredo. Hillary makes BO seem like Meir Kahane, so now is the time for Israel to become dramatically less dependent upon the United States. If Obama’s forthcoming UN jihad against the Jews expedites that distancing, so much the better.