Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike to prevent arch-foe Iran from going nuclear, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency said on Monday, according to AFP.

“I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of pre-emption and not of retaliation,” Shabtai Shavit told a conference.

Shavit, who served as chief of Israel’s foreign spy agency from 1989 to 1996, was speaking at a conference held at the hawkish Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.

“To use retaliation as the main strategy means to sit idly and wait until the enemy comes to attack you,” a university statement quoted Shavit as saying.

“But we are dealing with an enemy that plans all the time and waits for the opportunity to arise in order to attack, so what is the point, even morally, to wait and do something only when we are attacked,” he said.

Israel, which has the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal, regards Iran as its principal threat after repeated predictions by the Islamic republic’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state’s demise.

Along with the West, it suspects Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear programme, a claim Tehran denies.

Israel has backed US-led efforts to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability through sanctions, but has also refused to rule out military force.

In 1981 Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor and reportedly also attacked a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007.

Iran insists that its nuclear programme is aimed solely at power generation and medical research and says that the international community should focus its attention on Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

President Obama’s pronouncements and actions have been undermining Israel, Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida, says in a Newsmax interview.

Reports Newsmax’s Ronald Kessler, in responding to the Israeli raid on a Turkish flotilla, Obama has ignored the fact that the flotilla’s organizers and participants were looking for a confrontation and have “strong direct ties to Islamic fundamentalists, jihadists, and terrorists and to many who do not believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, says.

“I believe that there is an organized, systematic attempt to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist and to undermine Israel’s right to defend itself,” Rubio says. “And so Israel has never needed strong American support more than it needs it now.”

Yet, Rubio says, “Some of the pronouncements and actions of this administration over the last year have emboldened those who are trying to de-legitimize Israel.”

As outlined in the Newsmax story Jews Turn Against Obama, in part because of Obama’s tilt against Israel, Jewish support for him has plummeted.

When he started his race for the U.S. Senate, Rubio could not get support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

He turned to Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina senator who heads the Senate Steering Committee. DeMint was impressed by Rubio and his life story. Rubio, 39, was born in Miami to parents who fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s takeover. “My dad was a bartender,” Rubio, a lawyer, would say. “My mom worked at factories. She worked as a stock clerk. She worked as a maid. My parents worked jobs so that I could have the opportunities in my life that they never had.”

DeMint threw the coveted support of his Senate Conservatives Fund to Rubio.

Now a favorite of the tea party movement, Rubio says he entered the race for the Senate because, “There were some who believed that Republicans needed to become more like Democrats in order to start winning elections, and I always believed that that didn’t make any sense. I intend to prove that you can be a limited-government, free-enterprise conservative and get elected in a state as big and as important as Florida.”

Rubio says Obama has used the economic downturn as a pretext to impose ultra-liberal policies on the U.S.: “I am convinced that this administration and this congressional leadership are using this economic downturn as an excuse to try to redefine the American economic system, the role of the American government in our economy, and the role of America in the world.”

Under Obama, the federal government intrudes on almost every issue, he says: “Every problem in American is now dealt with by some sort of new federal government interaction of some sort or fashion. The stimulus was the beginning, but since then it’s the healthcare bill, the expansion of executive agency power, deficit spending budgets, and a weakening of America’s national defenses.”

While Obama has been aggressively going after terrorists with drones, many of his policies dealing with terrorism are “at best been naive and at worst wrong-headed,” Rubio says, adding that Obama’s decision to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and his use of euphemisms to describe radical Muslim terrorists are disturbing.

“Maybe he believes that it’s our rhetoric that creates terrorists, but it’s not. What creates terrorism around the world is the desire among some to impose their view on many. They want us to back down, they want us to walk away and leave them alone so they can continue to expand their sphere of influence, and that’s why terrorism exists.”

Rubio adds, “They don’t hate us because of what we say; they hate us because we’re standing in their way. Terrorists are cowards. They should be exposed for what they are and dealt with accordingly.”

Rubio says he is for the new Arizona immigration law as passed and against granting amnesty to illegal immigrants: “I think everyone’s first choice is for the federal government to deal with this issue squarely. So I hope that instead of being a model for 49 other states, Arizona’s law becomes a wake-up call for the federal government to once and for all deal with the issue of border security.”

Asked how the Republican Party can woo Hispanics, Rubio says, “The No. 1 issue in the Hispanic community in America is not immigration. It’s economic empowerment. It’s the desire to do better and to leave our children better off, and there’s only one economic system in the world where that has been possible time and again, and that’s the American free enterprise system.”

So, Rubio says, Republicans need to “make the connection between the American free enterprise system and their hopes and dreams, and then we have to go out and prove that we are legitimately the movement that supports American free enterprise.”

The Grand Dame of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas has been there and done that in terms of reporting happenings at White House press conferences since what seems like forever. Rumor has it that Thomas was even in Clara Bow talkies, but I digress.

In any event, she recently put her two cents in (1.65 cents adjusted after inflation) in regards to her views of Israel. Her statements make you wonder:

• Has she lost her mind?
• Has she OD’d on the Obamaaid?
• Is she anti-Israel?
• All of the above?

Perhaps this is just me, but Thomas should do all of us a favor and retire. It’s just that simple.

H/T to: The Lid

Why is President Barack Obama so obviously humiliating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Why is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negating everything she said when she represented New York state and piling on the Jewish state?

They want Netanyahu out. Specifically, they want him to feel such pressure that he dumps his right-wing coalition partners and forms a new government with the center-left party Kadima, headed by former Prime Minister Tzipi Livni, according to Dick Morris.

Livni, who thinks nothing of trading land for peace, no matter how flawed the peace might be, will then hold Netanyahu’s government hostage and force it to bend to the will of Washington and sign a deal with the Palestinians that cedes them land in return for a handful of vague vapors and promises, none of which will be kept.

On March 3 Livni said, in a Knesset debate, that since Netanyahu took control “Israel has become a pariah country in the world.”

She is trying to use Obama’s and Clinton’s rejection of Netanyahu’s course to force her way into the government. And Obama and Clinton are intent on helping her do so by publicly humiliating Netanyahu.

Netanyahu insists that he’d be happy to negotiate a peace accord. But, as he told me last year, “I just don’t have a peace partner with whom to negotiate.”

The Palestinians are expert at playing “good cop/bad cop” with Israel. The good cop — the Palestinian Authority — wants to negotiate a peace deal and insists on signs of Israeli good faith in order to do so.

Meanwhile, the bad cop — Hamas — fires missiles at Israel from Gaza, land Israel ceded to the Palestinians in order to promote the peace process earlier in the decade.

Any peace deal with the Palestinian Authority will not be binding on Hamas, and the pattern of Gaza will likely play out again: First, Israel cedes land to the Palestinian Authority. Second, Hamas seizes the newly ceded land through elections or military action. Third, Hamas refuses to recognize the peace deal and uses the newly acquired territory as a base from which to launch further attacks against Israel.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time.

When Hillary Clinton and President Obama explode in indignation against Israel for building apartments in East Jerusalem, they deliberately miss the point: There is no reason for Israel to catalyze peace negotiations when there is no single entity that is both committed to peace and speaks for the entire Palestinian people.

Without a peace partner, negotiations are either a trip to nowhere or a slippery slope to more Gaza-like concessions that do nothing but strengthen the enemies of Israel without providing any advancement to the cause of peace.

The merits of building in East Jerusalem or the need for a moratorium on all settlement construction are quite irrelevant as long as a substantial body of Palestinian opinion wants a war with Israel and the prevailing political authority in Gaza insists on the Jewish state’s eradication.

So why are Obama and Clinton so intent on raising the profile of the construction issue and publicizing it?

One suspects an effort is afoot to link Israeli resistance to the peace process with the ongoing loss of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not to the global terrorism of al-Qaida.

Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region] … Enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the area of responsibility.” In other words, blame Israel.

And ultimately, the administration’s agenda may be to explain its withdrawal of support for Israel by blaming its stubborn insistence on housing construction.

One can well see the Obama administration learning to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon, all the while blaming Israel for fomenting Iranian hostility by building housing.

Meanwhile, through American aid to Gaza, the Obama administration is helping Hamas to solidify its position in Gaza and lengthen its lease on political power — the very power it is using to torpedo the peace process.

President Obama snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in several ways during his visit to Washington this week.

The White House is upset with Netanyahu’s recent decision to approve Jewish construction in east Jerusalem.

The approval was announced during Vice President Biden’s recent visit to Israel to spark peace negotiations with Palestinians. The Obama administration is miffed by what it sees as Israeli intransigence on this issue.

The White House denied Netanyahu the red carpet treatment generally afforded to visiting heads of state.

The Israeli prime minister and Obama didn’t pose for photos together, and Netanyahu was excluded from dinner with the president Tuesday night.

When Netanyahu wouldn’t agree to concessions, Obama left a meeting with him, though he invited Netanyahu to stay at the White House, talk to Obama advisers and “let me know if there is anything new,” a U.S. congressman who spoke to Netanyahu, told The Times of London.

“It was awful,” the congressman said.

One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages,” conducted in such an adversarial environment that the Israeli delegation eventually left, worried that their White House phone conversations were being bugged.

Another Israeli paper wrote that Netanyahu received “the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea”.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quibbled with details of the Israeli accounts but didn’t deny that the White House was sending a message to Netanyahu.

That message: his refusal to freeze construction is the biggest obstacle to resuming peace talks with the Palestinians.

While the two countries are trying to overcome the clash, “the writing is on the wall that Obama and Netanyahu are going to clash on the final status (of the Palestinians),” Robert Malley, director of the International Crisis Group’s Middle East program, told The New York Times.

Conservatives and national security experts are condemning the Obama Administration’s missteps and mishandling of the valuable U.S.-Israeli relationship.

One Republican leader, former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer claims President Barack Obama displays an “outrageous hostility toward the only reliable democratic friend we have in the Middle East.”

Bauer, an influential Christian conservative known for his work on behalf of Israel, had an itinerary very similar to Vice President Biden’s last week. Bauer’s itinerary included meeting with Israel’s leadership, as he has many times before. He was in Israel as the current escalation in flawed U.S.-Israeli relations began with the announcement of a new building project in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital.

The president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families made the following statement: “It is obvious that in recent days the Obama administration has manufactured a crisis with Israel and is doing everything it can to humiliate our ally and weaken the Israeli government on the eve of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“We shouldn’t lose sight of what set off the administration’s tirade. It was the on-going process of authorizing homes to be built in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel for its people. No other nation in the world runs its housing decisions by the Obama administration, but Israel is expected to do so, leading to numerous Obama officials denouncing our ally and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling Israel’s behavior ‘insulting,’” said Bauer.

During the 1980’s, then-leftist lawyer Hillary Rodham Clinton served on the board of the New World Foundation, which funneled money to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the United States as a terrorist organization.

“[I]t is an insult to Israeli sovereignty to suggest that it must get the Obama administration’s permission to build homes for Israeli Jews. The homes are not the reason peace has been elusive in the Middle East. There is no peace because Israel’s enemies refuse its right to exist at all,” said Bauer.

What is particularly telling is that this is a president who bowed to a Saudi king, who has repeatedly held his hand out to Iran only to have his face slapped in response and who has regularly suffered the slings and arrows of insults from Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, to name a few. For whom does he reserve his anger, toughness and vehemence? For Israel, the only reliable ally we have in the Middle East, say many national security experts.

Even in the last few weeks, the Obama Administration weakly responded to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s insult of accusing the U.S. of ‘colonialism,’ and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for allegedly treating him with less than the appropriate level of respect after Libya called for a ‘jihad’ against peaceful Switzerland.

“Last week a Gallup poll showed support for Israel among the American people at 64%. When President Obama attacks Israel, he may gain the applause of Middle East thugs, but he will not get the support of the American people,” Bauer said.

Critics are upset over Obama’s “Middle East Peace” team such as Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell. In her early days as an attorney, Clinton was quite vocal regarding her support for the Yassir Arafat and the PLO. In addition, she uttered anti-Israeli accusations. In May 1998, she told a youth conference on Middle East peace in Villars, Switzerland, that she supports the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Then, in November 1999, while on a purported State visit to the Middle East, she publicly appeared with Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha. With Hillary at her side, Suha Arafat made the deliberately false allegation that “Our [Palestinian] people have been submitted to the daily and intensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.” Mrs. Arafat also accused Israel of contaminating much of the water sources used by Palestinians with “chemical materials” and poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.

Instead of reacting with outrage, Hillary Clinton sat by silently and gave her a hug and a kiss when she finished speaking. Later, many hours after the event, and only after a media furor put her on the spot for what many view as a bit more than a mere political “faux pas”, Mrs. Clinton called on “all sides” to refrain from “inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations” – including Israel, whose leaders made no such accusations. 

Similarly, in February 1996, Hillary hosted a reception at the White House for leaders of Hamas-supporting groups such as the American Muslim Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. And in January, 1998, Hillary hosted another White House reception honoring Muslim leaders and the Muslim Public Affairs Council who defended militant Islamic fundamentalism and also supported radical Islamic groups.

Below is the most recent posting from Navy Admiral Michael Mullen’s blog:

I just returned from a trip to the Middle East where I visited with civilian and military leaders in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. It was a trip I wanted to make for some time now, given the scope of our security commitments in the region and the mutual challenges we all still face. At each stop and in each meeting, I was encouraged to find, though perspectives certainly vary, the desire for stability and security is as common as it is vigorous.

I was also struck by two other overarching themes.

First, where the United States has military relationships in the region, they are strong and getting stronger. Our partners want to engage, exercise, and operate with us. They also want to pursue new and innovative ways to tackle common challenges there and around the world.

The Egyptians were proud of their participation in this year’s Bright Star exercise, and want to make it even more vibrant in the future. The Israeli’s, of course, remain a vital ally and a cornerstone of our regional security commitments. I was delighted to meet with more than 100 Israeli doctors and nurses who deployed to Haiti to help with international relief efforts. To a person they were proud of the impact they made and of the speed with which they made it.

In similar fashion, the Jordanians, long a key contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, walked me through the medical support they continue to provide in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also showed me a Special Operations Training Center that has tremendous potential for how modern militaries can best prepare for counter-terrorism operations in a harsh environment.

The Saudi’s shared with me valuable lessons they learned working with the Yemeni government to deal with the Houthi issue and in the UAE I was very impressed to see an air coordination and advanced training center that not only provides virtually unimpeded training opportunities to regional air forces, but also improves real-world tactical air coordination issues.

The second overarching theme was, of course, Iran.

If there is one great concern shared by all the nations I visited, it is over the direction they believe Iran is going and what that means for them and for their citizens. I maintain my conviction that Iran remains on a path to achieve nuclear weapons, and that even this very pursuit further destabilizes the region. Like us, it isn’t just a nuclear-capable Iranian military our friends worry about; it’s an Iran with hegemonic ambitions and a desire to dominate its neighbors. This outcome drives many of the national security decisions our partners are making, and I believe we must be mindful of that as we look to the future post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan.

Let me be clear: we owe the Secretary and the President a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness. But as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action. For now, the diplomatic and economic levers of international power ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled.

No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive.