Obama seems like the dream boy to some: young, charismatic, articulate and witty.  If presidents were only selected for personality and charm, he would win handily in the race.

But charm only goes so far, and once that runs out, Obama does have some problems to overcome in his policies and beliefs.

One that I personally discount is the whole “Islamic” factor.  I don’t think he is and I don’t give much credence to those emails.

But in an area that does closely dovetail to Islam, he does have some issue concerning Israel. 

What trickled this to my attention was an article sent to me from Commentary Magazine.

Obama and Israel–It Gets Worse

A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:

Let  me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine -  Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him  to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like  they might be moving toward genocide?

Get a load of Power’s response:

What we don’t need is some kind of early  warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing,  I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to  be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the  line.

Well the wierdness never ceases.  President Ahmadinejad of Iran has been a notorious Jew hater and anti Semite for a while, and loves to deny the holocaut.  Well apprently his staff has found a new way to top him in the ridiculous department.

Hitler was really a Jew and was in cahoots with the USSR and Britain.

Ynetnews: Iran: Hitler was a Jew  —  Advisor to President Ahmadinejad claims Nazi leader was Jew who conspired with USSR and Britain to establish Jewish state.

Just when you thought the Iranian leadership could stoop no further: A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel.

In the interview, translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a chief aide to Ahmadinejad, told Baztab that Hitler’s paternal grandmother was a Jewish prostitute and his father even kept his Jewish name until finally changing it to Hitler when he was 40.

Ramin also claimed that the reason Hitler developed such an aversion to Judaism was because his Jewish mother was a promiscuous woman. Hitler therefore, says Ramin, tried to escape his religion.

But…

Ramin cites a 1974 book by Hennecke Kardel titled ‘Adolf Hitler: Founder of Israel’, which alleges that Hitler strived to create a Jewish state as a result of being influenced by his Jewish relatives and his cooperation with Britain – which also wanted to drive the Jews out of Europe.

Ramin claims in the interview that Hitler both identified with his Judaism and was disgusted by it. It is these ambivalent feelings, said Ramin, that formed the basis for his treatment of Jews.

According to Ramin on the one hand Hitler’s relatives and the friends who brought him to power, as well as his mistresses and personal physician, were all Jewish.

On the other hand he welcomed the expulsion of ambitious and influential Jews from Europe to the British Mandate of Palestine.

Yes, I am surprised.  Gratified perhaps, but still amazed.  Hollywood has actually taken a position against terrorism.

Hollywood has long since been a town of liberals who typically take positions I find nonsensical.  But today in a full page ad in the LA Time, 84 Hollywood heavy weights took a different stand.

Nic and stars against terror 
(note:  Interesting that the ad is in a US paper, but we read about it from a source in Australia…)

NICOLE Kidman has made a public stand against terrorism - and accepted a high-level offer to visit Israel.

The actress was joined by 84 other Hollywood stars, directors and studio bosses yesterday in a powerfully-worded full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

It specifically targeted "terrorist organisations" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad read. "If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.

"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

The ad was also signed by celebrities including Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, William Hurt and Ridley Scott plus News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch and Paramount Pictures chairman Sumner Redstone.

News Corporation is the parent company of News Limited, publisher of The Daily Telegraph.

It also emerged yesterday that Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres had persuaded Kidman to visit Israel.

The pair met at a conference held by Mr Murdoch in California last month.

"We will be happy to have you," Mr Peres told Kidman. "Maybe you can be tourism ambassador to the Galilee."

Kidman asked Mr Peres about the country’s prospects for the future.

"We will come out stronger from this conflict (with Hezbollah)," he said.

With so many people condemning Israel for their retaliation this is gratifying.

Yes we all know that Mel Gibson got a DUI and shot his drunken mouth off, apparently using some fairly clear racial anti semitic epitaths.  In the drama that followed, he made a minor apology, then stunned everyone by actually making a clear apology that made no attempt to diminish his actions.

In Hollywood and in Washington DC, that is anathama.  Here is the basic details of the apology:

Mel Gibson asks the Jewish community for help

Mel Gibson has finally confirmed that the "despicable" comments he made, while he was being arrested for alleged drunk driving, were in fact anti-Semitic. And now he’s asking for help. Here’s his latest statement, issued today, via the Associated Press:

There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge.

I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God’s child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

I have not dealt with the situation in Israel and all the bombing and such in my blog.  Honestly, I have not had near enough time to gather the links and resources necessary to do the story justice.

Others like Sister Toldjah and Michelle Malkin have more then made up for my distraction.

But this story at Opinion Journal was noteworthy to me, not just in how it deals with the participants, but with the UN, and the International Community as a whole in their reactions as well as their involvement.

The powder keg over there is very worrisome, and has been for decades, but in the latest events, Iran And Syria are not helping, nor is the UN. 

Ask yourself a question:  Here you have Iran and Syria clearly meddling in the events, Iran is actively seeking a nuclear program, and Iran has openly hated Israel for years.

Is this not a scary situation?

In the only positive news I could find in this, at least the people suffering from BDS will now have a new reason to blame Bush.

States of Terror:  Syria, Iran and their proxies wage war on Israel.

Israel’s military invasion and naval blockade of Lebanon is being denounced in European capitals and at the United Nations as a "disproportionate" response to the kidnapping this week of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah. Israel’s decision late last month to invade Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of another soldier by Hamas was also condemned as lacking in proportion. So here’s a question for our global solons: Since hostage-taking is universally regarded as an act of war, what "proportionate" action do they propose for Israel?

In the case of Hamas, perhaps Israel could rain indiscriminate artillery fire on Gaza City, surely a proportionate response to the 800 rockets Hamas has fired at Israeli towns in the last year alone. In the case of Hezbollah, it might mean carpet bombing a section of south Beirut, another equally proportionate response to Hezbollah’s attacks on civilian Jewish and Israeli targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s.