He has already begun to shape Obama’s Middle East policy. 

Who is he? What is his background? What is to be expected of his advice to the next president?  John Perazzo provides some answers in Front Page Magazine:   

Robert Malley was raised in France. His lineage is noteworthy. His father, Simon Malley (1923-2006), was a key figure in the Egyptian Communist Party. A passionate hater of Israel, the elder Malley was a close friend and confidante of the late PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat; an inveterate critic of “Western imperialism”; a supporter of various revolutionary “liberation movements,” particularly the Palestinian cause; a beneficiary of Soviet funding; and a supporter of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to American Thinker news editor Ed Lasky, Simon Malley “participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World [and] … wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations.”

In a July 2001 op-ed which [Robert] Malley penned for the New York Times, he alleged that Israeli—not Palestinian—inflexibility had caused the previous year’s Camp David peace talks (brokered by Bill Clinton) to fall apart. This was one of several controversial articles Malley has written—some he co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Arafat—blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat for the failure of the peace process.

Malley’s identification of Israel as the cause of the Camp David impasse has been widely embraced by Palestinian and Arab activists around the world, by Holocaust deniers like Norman Finkelstein, and by anti-Israel publications such as Counterpunch. It should be noted that Malley’s account of the Camp David negotiations is entirely inconsistent with the recollections of the key figures who participated in those talks—specifically, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, and then-U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Middle East envoy).

Malley also has written numerous op-eds urging the U.S. to disengage from Israel to some degree, and recommending that America reach out to negotiate with its traditional Arab enemies such as Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah (a creature of Iran dedicated to the extermination of the Jews and death to America), and Muqtada al-Sadr (the Shiite terrorist leader in Iraq). 

In addition, Malley has advised nations around the world to establish relationships with, and to send financial aid to, the Hamas-led Palestinian government in Gaza. In Malley’s calculus, the electoral victory that swept Hamas into power in January 2006 was a manifestation of legitimate Palestinian “anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, [and] Western lecturing …”

Moreover, Malley contends that it is both unreasonable and unrealistic for Israel or Western nations to demand that Syria sever its ties with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Iran. Rather, he suggests that if Israel were to return the Golan Heights (which it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War—two conflicts sparked by Arab aggression which sought so permanently wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth) to Syrian control, Damascus would be inclined to pursue peace with Israel.

Malley has criticized the U.S. for allegedly remaining “on the sidelines” and being a “no-show” in the overall effort to bring peace to the nations of the Middle East. Exhorting the Bush administration to change its policy of refusing to engage diplomatically with terrorists and their sponsoring states, Malley wrote in July 2006: “Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah…. The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”

This inclination to negotiate with any and all enemies of the U.S. and Israel—an impulse which Malley has outlined clearly and consistently—clearly has had a powerful influence on Barack Obama.

 Barry Rubin writes in the Jerusalem Post:

Read the whole thing. Here’s an extract:

We now have the perfect metaphor for the Middle East’s political situation. In Egypt, a little boy with cystic fibrosis badly needs a certain medicine. Unfortunately for him, that drug is only produced in Israel, and Egypt’s health ministry won’t let it be imported.

Unless one understands how this story typifies the region, it’s impossible to understand the Middle East.

Let’s remember that Egypt has been at peace with Israel for over 30 years, and that, nevertheless, its government still does much to boycott, not to mention demonize, the Jewish state. By constantly pursuing a hate-Israel campaign, it stokes an atmosphere of hatred and extremism which also gives ammunition to the Muslim Brotherhood that seeks to turn Egypt into a war-oriented, totalitarian Islamist state.

So tightly controlled is the Egyptian media, so extraordinary the Israelphobia, that the English-language Cairo paper Al-Ahram was considered courageous even to mention the sick boy’s family’s effort to obtain the Israeli-invented medicine.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian wrote recently: "Admission into [a] state-run hospital is likely to cost one his life." This came shortly after a scandal involving a top ruling-party politician who was discovered selling tainted transfusion blood.

Arab countries cannot develop medicines and hi-tech advances precisely because they are too busy using up the resources for battles against various fantasy enemies of Allah.

SOME YEARS ago, a US official told me about funds that had been offered Egyptian officials to implement a program dealing with Red Sea pollution. But the project involved cooperation with Israel. The official was told that anything helping Israel was unacceptable, no matter how much good it might do Egypt. …

The rest of the world, finding such talk incomprehensible, either thinks it’s meaningless jabber, or ignores it altogether. Surely the problem must stem from addressable grievances, fixable misunderstandings and emotional exaggeration? Unfortunately, this is all nonsense.

What’s the effective voice in the region? Not the "peace process" concept used in talking with the West, but the "resistance" concept, used in talking among themselves. 

 

The self-abasement of the British authorities before the Arabs is now complete and utterly contemptible. It’s hard to say whether they are more stupid in their shortsightedness as to the consequences of such caving-in,  or more wicked in possibly working deliberately to bring about the demise of their nation and all that it used to stand for.  

The Saudis, in their customary immoral fashion, used bribery to gain commercial advantage. It was a clear breach of British law. But the highest court in Britain has let them off.  

Read Melanie Phillips here on how the Law Lords have sacrificed the highest principles of British law to sheer expediency. 

‘Now along comes Obama—whose foreign policy experience wouldn’t cover the head of a pin—saying an Obama administration will “start early” to get this conflict wrapped up.

It also emerged this week, though, that Arab states may not share Obama’s sense of urgency when it comes to helping Palestinians. Reuters reports that “Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has appealed to the World Bank to help him secure emergency financing to bridge a shortfall in donor funds and pay public workers.” The PA is in a “budget crisis despite billions of dollars in aid pledged last year to support a U.S.-backed peace drive.”

It’s not that the U.S. itself has been remiss in its payments; “the State Department said the [U.S.] had already surpassed its $555 million in pledged support for 2008 to the [PA] and urged other donors to help out.”

But “many Arab states have not met their financial commitments despite pressure from Washington.” Meanwhile “workers in Gaza say Hamas, which receives support from Iran and other Islamist allies, has been paying salaries on time despite the Western boycott….”

Why would that be? If boosting Fatah, beating Hamas, and solving the Palestinian problem is so crucial to the “moderate” Arab states, why would they be laggard in their PA payments even as Iran and company keep giving Hamas all it needs? Part of the answer, aside from stinginess, requires looking at the real Middle East and not the version of it painted by Western guilt.

Take Jordan, for instance. Last month it was reported that “Jordan has quietly let the Bush White House know it is concerned over the prospect of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank…. [Jordanian] officials said Jordan’s King Abdullah has warned the administration that [such a] state…would fuel the Islamic opposition and could lead to an attempt to overthrow the kingdom.”

Indeed, in the real Middle East—despite de rigueur public statements by Abdullah and his father-predecessor King Hussein about the desirability of a Palestinian state—Jordan has long feared such an outcome. Jordan has both a large Palestinian population and a simmering Islamist movement, and knows a Palestinian state across the river is just the thing that would light the spark of insurrection.

As for Syria, to assume that creating a Palestinian state would soften it is to ignore the fact that for decades Syria has hosted in Damascus precisely those Palestinian terrorist organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP-GC, and others that are most openly contemptuous of any “solution” other than Israel’s eradication. For believing the regime can be wooed away from this posture there’s a Middle Eastern word—chutzpah.

Then there are the Saudis, still believed by many to be the linchpin of a more Western-aligned, America-accepting Middle East. Yet their much-touted 2002 peace plan calls for a “return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel—code for its demographic demise.

Some of the reasons, then, for the lack of Arab eagerness to aid the PA are: fear of a Palestinian state; ideological rejection of a Palestinian state on only part of the land; and ideological rejection of Israel.

If such nuances tend to escape the Bush administration, they’re even less likely to register with Obama. It’s very possible, though, that by the time he would be president, there will be a different Israeli government that’s more security-conscious and less pliant than Olmert’s government was. If so, expect to see Obama square off against what he would perceive as the real obstacle to peace and harmony: Israel. It’s a grim prospect.’

Read the rest of the article in Front Page Magazine here.

 Israel went to war to get back two kidnapped soldiers. Ended the war without getting them back. Now exchanges live terrorists for the two dead (and mutilated) bodies, giving strong incentive to its enemies to kidnap as many more Israelis as they can, and kill them - by any appalling means.

It’s hard to say whether Prime Minister Olmert is more stupid or wicked. In my book he’s a traitor, several times over. His forcing Jews to leave their homes in Gaza was another of his betrayals of his own people.

As he’s notoriously a man susceptible to bribery, I wonder if he’s been bribed to use his office to destroy Israel? Just a thought.  

Melanie Phillips tells the story of the immoral exchange of murderers for corpses and comments on it here.  

 Power Line correctly argues:

OBAMA ON JERUSALEM – DISHONEST, IGNORANT, OR BOTH

 

As with virtually every other issue of consequence, Barack Obama has failed to take a consistent, coherent position with respect to his goal for the city of Jerusalem. A few months ago, when he was pandering to the pro-Israel audience at AIPAC, Obama said that Jerusalem should remain “undivided.” For those with a basic understanding of the discourse on this issue, the meaning of his statement was clear – Jerusalem will remain the Jewish people’s historical capital city and will remain exclusively part of the Jewish state under any future agreement with the Palestinians.

Obama, moreover, had plenty of incentive to convey this position to the AIPAC convention. Indeed, any other descripton of the future of Jerusalem would have played poorly with an audience Obama very much wanted to impress.

However, Obama’s handlers were uncomfortable with Obama’s statement because the call for an undivided city might “prejudice” the “final status” of Jerusalem. The party line among mainstream advocates of the "peace process" is to call on Israel and the Palestinians negotiate without such preconditions, with the "final status" of Jerusalem to be resolved at the end of the process.

With the AIPAC convention behind him, Obama has fallen back to the party line. Attempting to "clarify" his "poorly phrased" remarks to the pro-Israel crowd, Obama now says:

The point we were simply making was that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ‘67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent. I was not trying to predetermine what are essentially final-status issues.

But that is an easy point to make. If this is what Obama wanted to convey to AIPAC, it’s difficult to believe he would have used the loaded term "undivided."

But what of Obama’s current vision under which Mr. Yes-We-Can resolves to "create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent" that it is not exclusively part of a Jewish state but requires no barriers? The question answers itself. Here’s how David Hazony, a resident of Jerusalem, puts it:

What could it possibly mean to want a “coherent” city that is the capital of two different countries, one of which has been teaching its entire population to hate the other and commit suicide bombings in its restaurants for 15 years now — and all this without a proper border? I live in Jerusalem. The border between Israel and the Palestinians, wherever it may run, and no matter how long peace reigns, will never be like that between Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is unlikely ever even to be like the one between Arizona and Mexico. If there is ever a division of Jerusalem, there will be more than just barbed wire separating the two halves of the city. We are talking about different worlds entirely, and security arrangements will reflect this.

As Hazony concludes, Obama either understands this or he doesn’t. If he does, he is being dishonest when he claim the city can be undivided in other than the sense in which his AIPAC remarks were construed. If he doesn’t, his ignorance is staggering.

 

 Read here how the British tax-payer supports torture by the Palestinian Authority. 

American tax-payers do the same. 

 Can it be true that tiny children, some only two years old,  are treated like this by Arabs? 

Read here why Melanie Phillips thinks so.

We entirely agree with her.

In Obama on Zionism and Hamas, Barack Obama calls Israel a ‘constant sore.’

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy.

Do we really want this man as our president, when he thinks that our only ally in the Middle East is an infection?