“KENYAN AMERICAN" OBAMA HAS NEWS FOR ZIONIST AMERICANS - JULY 28, 2015

At first I wasn’t sure if I heard it right. So I did a Google search and the replay of what Obama said in Nairobi last week came up quickly.
 
This is what he said: “I’m the first Kenyan American to be President of the United States.”
 
Kenyan American? That is something he never said before, and he said it with pride.
 
A comment like that packs a punch, especially as it comes from a man dogged by accusations that he wasn’t born in the United States. He embraced his Kenyan heritage. He showed himself proud of his African roots; let his accusers have their say.
 
In fact, nobody said anything. I did another search and found no one complaining about dual loyalties. Deafening silence.
 

...taking the cue from the President himself, let’s hear no more about divided loyalties.
The New York Times simply noted that he paid homage to the land of his father. Very nice. Yes, I give Obama credit for that if for nothing else.
 
But others, like American Zionists – can we please share some of that credit for ourselves? We too are completely loyal to America.
 
We too have family ties. For us it is Israel, the land of OUR fathers. These ties are historic, ancestral, emotional.
 
These are the same reflexes that motivate our love for America.
 
So taking the cue from the President himself, let’s hear no more about divided loyalties.
 
In terms of American Jews who stand with America together with Israel, enough please from the mischief-makers. Shut up, in other words.
 
I’m sure Obama feels the same about Kenya so far as shared ideals as we do about Israel.
 
I take that back.
 
Perhaps Obama himself would take that back because when he appealed to Kenya for more tolerance for women and gays, his message was met with frowns. When it comes to all that, Mr. Obama would be far more at home in Israel. That’s another reason our hearts go out to the Jewish State. 
 
Am I foolish enough to believe that our scoffers are done with us? They never sleep and they are never done.
 
Bernie Sanders knows the feeling.
 
Sanders is the Independent Democrat running for Place or Show against fading frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
 
A few weeks ago the Jewish Senator from Vermont was a guest on NPR where he swiftly found himself accused of divided loyalties.
 
Interviewer Diane Rehm (an Arab American) presented the following matter-of-fact statement: “Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.”
 
Sanders, who in his youth spent some time in a kibbutz, was forced to defend himself. “Well no,” he responded, “I’m an American.”
 
Obama is free and clear from that type of accusation. His admirers, NPR and the rest of them, won’t touch this.
 
Neither should the rest of us patriots be hearing another word against Zionist Americans. Not a single word, from anybody.
 
What’s good for Kenyan Americans ought to be just as good for Zionist Americans.
 
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.Website: www.jackengelhard.com

OBAMA'S IRAN DEAL: WHO'S BUYING THIS WRECK? - JULY 26, 2015

Credit King Solomon once again for his wisdom: “A twisted thing cannot be made straight.”

This takes us directly to John Kerry and his pitch before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he tried to explain away his perfectly awful Iran Deal.

The Senators, mainly Republicans Bob Corker, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson and Democrat Bob Menendez, saw the lemon for what it is. They were not buying Kerry’s central argument that if Iran’s mullahs fail to behave properly, well, we’ll just go back in and teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

We’ll take it all back. We’ll re-impose sanctions. We’ll have them reimburse all the money and force them to unhook all their missiles.

Why – in a snap we’ll simply undo everything.

You betcha.

Dream on, we said, those of us who watched the proceedings via C-Span. The cable news networks, including Fox, did not carry the hearing, except for a voice-cut here and there, and this was a mistake. They had a chance to provide a crucial public service. Instead, they chose regular programming and the usual commercials.

Then again, for Kerry, this was a commercial, selling this crooked deal – which cannot be made straight.

As Kerry shared his dreams with the Committee, we thought back to another dreamer, Shimon Peres.

We recalled his high hopes when, as Yitzhak Rabin’s foreign minister, he gladly and enthusiastically signed the Oslo Accords, of which he was partly its architect. The Left had its Big Win. Never mind that Israel had fully legitimized a terror group, the PLO, as its equal. Equal footing for a gang of misfits.

Peres dreamed of a “New Middle East,” which is “new” all right, but in all the wrong places.

Overnight, through a handshake, Rabin to Arafat, a new government was created, a government of scoundrels that now has a seat at the UN.

Promises were made. Israel agrees to numerous concessions, principally a judenrein Gaza and partly the 'West Bank'. Plus, more concessions to come.

But, people said – if the PLO misbehaves, all bets are off. We’re taking it all back, in a snap.

Two intifadas later and Hamas terrorists ensconced in Gaza, nothing’s been taken back – a twisted thing cannot be made straight.

The Senators asked Kerry if he expected Iran to become a regional power. Kerry said no. But, they said, Obama said yes. So yes it is!

So yes is the answer for Obama’s “New Middle East,” just as Peres dreamed of a “New Middle East,” which is “new” all right, but in all the wrong places. Practically every country that surrounds Israel is in hellish, murderous turmoil. Not quite the sweet dreams that Peres had in mind. Or Obama. Or Kerry.

This was difficult television. Kerry squirmed throughout his testimony. Would Israel be able to react against Iran when necessary?

So Kerry danced around that and he waltzed around the question as to why the Administration went straight to the UN before going to Congress.

The Senators had him trapped.

But in the end, they will do nothing, which is what they usually do – nothing. Lois Lerner is still on the loose.

Hillary is still not in jail for Benghazi and her email scandal. Our borders are still wide open.

Much huffing and puffing from the Congress, but nothing much happens.

That is why Trump is still up in the polls. We the People, the little people, we agree with him that our politicians are 90-pound weaklings.

Trump will not win the nomination, but he can dream can’t he? So far his dreams have done no harm.

Can’t say the same for the rest of the dreamers who keep sticking us with nightmares.

Chuck Schumer – where are you?

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

THE JOHN KERRY COMEDY HOUR - JULY 23, 2015

Given John Kerry’s flawless performance in Tehran – he never won a single hand – this must be said in his favor: he is no hustler.

Casinos don’t lock their doors when they see him coming. In fact they open their doors wider for such suckers. At the Poker Table he is not known as Slick Willie. In fact the boys all smile when they see him coming and have a chair ready or him. “Please,” they say. “Join us.”

If he counts cards at Blackjack he counts them in favor of the House.

The man can’t win at anything. They love him.

In Pool Rooms he is not known as Minnesota Fats. “Grab a stick,” say the Sharps. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Despite his poker face, they know him as a sap, a loser who arrives by limo but needs to toss pennies for a Greyhound ride backhome.

The man can’t win at anything. They love him.

They love him in Iran and they love him in Europe. He can be counted on to lose all his chips.

From Monte Carlo through Las Vegas to Atlantic City they keep inviting him to join their tournaments and to please arrive flushed with American cash. Rooms, meals, entertainment – everything comped so long as he joins them at their tables where they know he will always bet wrong.

That’s especially the case after his performance against Iran’s ayatollahs where they hung him out to dry.

He did not win a single wager. So we must imagine the Nuke negotiations as follows:

John: I insist that inspectors be allowed in at any time, without advance warning.

The Ayatollahs: No.

John: Okay. Okay. Sorry I brought it up.

The Ayatollahs: Are we done?

John: Well, if you don’t mind my mentioning – can you please stop subsidizing terrorists throughout the world?”

The Ayatollahs: Are you nuts? This is what we do. Understand?

John: Understood.

The Ayatollahs: Are we done? Because we’re rushed to join the Death to Israel and Death to America rally. It’s Monday.

John: Glad you brought that up. Can you possibly let up on that since we’re lifting economic sanctions? That’s $150 billion to you.

The Ayatollahs: Are you kidding? Those Death chants, that is our baseball. That is our Mom and Apple Pie. Are we done?

John: Not quite. As part of this deal, at which I’m lifting not only the Nuke embargo…

The Ayatollahs: Very generous of you. We pray for Americans like you. You must come more often. 

Bring friends. We have more bargains.

John: But we also lifted the conventional weapons embargo…

The Ayatollahs: You can be sure we will repay your magnanimity. Just watch us pay you back, and sooner than you think, my friend.

John: So with all that, would it be too much to ask…

The Ayatollahs: Now don’t get pushy on us, John. What do you want and be quick?

John: The four hostages. Can we please have them back? I can’t go homeempty-handed. People will say I’m a fool.

The Ayatollahs: No and yes.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller IndecentProposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.Website: www.jackengelhard.com

AFTER TENNESSEE, WHAT'S IN A NAME? - JULY 20, 2015

Jews revere Moses but we do not name all our kids Moses and most Christians are not named Jesus.

One reason we give people different names is so that we can tell them apart.

In the newsrooms where I worked when I asked for Mike, Mike appeared, just one, not a roomful. 

When I asked for Mary, Mary showed up, always delightful. I will admit that Sue posed a problem. 

There was a time when there was a run on that name, Sue, and when four of them arrived at once, well, nothing personal, but we knew we had to fix this.

People wise up. After a name becomes too popular, parents get creative. There has not been a Sue in any newsroom for the past 12 years.

So imagine the confusion of tongues if we all had the same name. This appears to be the trend within the Muslim community – a community, I wish to say at the start, that I accept as mostly law abiding. As long as you respect my faith, I respect yours, so let nothing that I say be taken disrespectfully.

You revere Mohammad above everybody else and that’s fine. But isn’t it time to rethink this business of naming nearly all your kids Mohammad?

Some day I will tell what it’s like reporting on a cabbie in Manhattan, even for a job well done, when all are named Mohammad. 

Waji, my Manhattan neighbor and occasional racetrack buddy, is himself a practicing Muslim but agrees that I may have a point.

“But get ready for some heat.” True. People like to misunderstand.

Waji has one daughter and three sons. He named none of them Mohammad.

Why not?

“No reason,” says Waji, whom readers met in “The Bathsheba Deadline” as Jay Garfield’s sidekick in 

Jay’s editorial war in favor of Israel and against Jihad. “It just never occurred to us,” says Waji who is still pleased and mortified to find himself featured in this book that Robert Spencer declared “A courageous and rousing thriller about clashing civilizations.”

Clashing civilizations, indeed.

Too many of our people are being killed and too many of the killers are named Mohammad.

The trouble with naming every kid Mohammad is that when something like Chattanooga, Tennessee comes along, as it did a few days ago, we wait for the killer’s name to be announced and we expect it to be Mohammad.

Sure enough it was. It was Mohammad who murdered five of our Marines.

This is happening much too often. Too many of our people are being killed and too many of the killers are named Mohammad.

This causes trouble to the many people named Mohammad who are upstanding citizens.

It is for their sake that I wonder if this is such a good idea – the idea of naming every son Mohammad.

For our sake? Well, it would sure be nice if the entire killing can be stopped, all in the name of Mohammad.

Really now, he cannot be happy with what so many Mohammads are doing in his name. Can he?

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller IndecentProposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.Website: www.jackengelhard.com

NOW FOR THE BRIGHT SIDE OF OBAMA'S IRAN DEAL - JULY 16, 2015

That Obama (like Frankenstein) created a monster, of this there is no doubt. The Iran Deal is folly from A to Z.

Even many on the Left agree that Kerry pandered like a Quisling in Tehran, which leads me to consider if there may be an upside to the fiasco.

By the numbers, let’s have a look at the positives that may have come about unintentionally:

1. The Left and the Right in Israel stand together against this dirty deal. Netanyahu and Herzog exchanged handshakes. That’s something.

2. The Palestinian Arabs have lost the front page. This is remarkable. For the first time in years I find no mention of them anywhere in The New York Times. Their whining, their complaints now fall on deaf ears – now that Iran, looming deadly across the globe, has taken the spotlight.

Their grievances are “a sideshow of a sideshow” compared to the menace posed by a nuclear-empowered Iran. The Palestinians will have to get back in line to win back the world’s attention -- a serious consequence to people who crave nothing but attention.

3. For years the Arab-Israeli conflict was all about them, the Palestinians and their cries for “more…more.” Well, no more.

“Two-state-solution” and “land-for-peace” – no sir, not in this climate where Israel faces an enemy that is sworn to destroy her through ballistic missiles. No “painful concessions” while the ayatollahs rouse a million Iranians to chant “Death to Israel” and will soon acquire the means to literally give it their best shot.

4. In cahoots with the Palestinians, the EU and the UN will have to find somebody else to drag into the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel will be too busy to show up. The Jewish State has bigger business to attend. Her survival.

5. UN diplomats will continue to harass the Jewish State, but with a missile-bloated Iran hovering overheard, their denunciations will sound laughable.

6. Now can the usual scoundrels say that tiny Israel is a threat to the region – and say it with a straight face?

7. BDS has been marginalized. Now it’s Israel against Iran. Now it’s about Israel facing a nuclear nightmare. Now it’s real. Time to wipe the smirk off their faces.

Now that Obama and Kerry have created a New Goliath, Israel is back to being perceived as what she was all along. Israel is David.

8. Israel finally has clarity. The suspense is over. The deed’s been done. Israel knows the enemy and it is Iran – Iran and whoever makes common cause with its bloodthirsty tyrants. Israel knows that it’s time to prepare. The signal has been sent. The message has been delivered.

The world’s number one terror regime has been rebooted economically and reloaded militarily and thus reinvigorated seeks (for whatever reason) to murder every Jewish person in Israel and throughout the world. Clear enough? Yes. Positively. Absolutely.

9. Now that Obama and Kerry have created a New Goliath, Israel is back to being perceived as what she was all along. Israel is David.

Read this for the rounded view from the eyes of a warrior journalist.

We are back to David against Goliath, and even the Sunni Arabs have clarity about this.

10. The Sunni World, beginning with Saudi Arabia and onto the rest of the Gulf States, now view Israel as a partner. At least they know we are all in the same boat. It is too late to keep old grudges. The day will come when Israel will have to rush to their rescue, and they know this.

11. To overturn the deal, which places America in equal jeopardy with Israel, Democrats in both Houses of Congress will have to help Republicans form an overwhelming veto-proof majority. If the Democrats fail, we will know they meant it when they jeered Israel at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

There will still be time to trash this thing if enough people come to their senses.

12. We know where Hillary stands. She stands with Obama on this deal. America has been warned.

American Jewish voters -- Hello?

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller IndecentProposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

THE IRAN DEAL: THEY WIN, WE LOSE - JULY 14, 2014

So it’s a done deal and Iran gets to keep its nuclear program moving along, some say slowly, some say quickly.

Depends who’s talking and it depends who’s smiling. In Iran it’s festive. Not so in Israel.

Frankly, even the Palestinian Arabs should not be gloating over the deal hatched between Kerry and Mullahs.

In a snap their grievances that they’ve nursed and popularized throughout the world are suddenly less attractive now that Israel (and everybody else) faces a rogue regime, Iran, that’s been retooled financially and militarily, thanks to Western negotiators who’ve been outhustled by Persian flim-flam artists.

The nations are less likely to say how high when Palestinian leaders say jump. Now that something bigger has come along, a fattened Iran, the Palestinians, who had their chances for peace, but blew them all, will have to stand in line and wait their turn to win back the world’s attention.

Israel, for one, is unlikely to be in any mood to even discuss any sort of concessions to the Palestinians. The Israelis are ticked off. Rightly so.

The Jewish State has a bigger, more urgent fight on its hands, a country, Iran, that’s been freed from sanctions and given time to build its bombs.

Even as the ink was drying on the paper, the papers signed between Tehran and the Six World Powers, led by the Obama Administration, disputes immediately arose as to what was agreed. Obama says that sanctions will be lifted gradually. The mullahs say no. The sanctions will be lifted immediately.

We the Suckers were played like a script from a B-movie.

Obama says that inspectors will be allowed to check up on Iran’s nuclear behavior practically any time after a 21-day heads up.

Not quite, say the mullahs. Yes, 21 days, but then another week and even another week before Iran gets to decide who gets a passport.

In other words, Iran gets the final say and we can sure that centrifuges will be hidden and games will be played.

In the coming hours, days, weeks, months and years, get ready for headlines about Iran’s refusal to comply with this, that or any part of the agreement.

On Iran’s mischief and double-dealing -- on that we can gamble because it is a sure bet.

From the start, We the Suckers were played like a script from a B-movie. It’s Kerry versus the ayatollahs. Will he win? Will he lose?

Stay tuned for the suspense.

In the end, there was no doubt. Obama and his man Kerry were going to shove this through at all costs.

What costs?

For the best possible interpretation, Iran gets about 10 years before it can really go crazy building intercontinental ballistic missiles.

That is small comfort for those of us of a certain age.

But who would be so callous as to imperil our kids and our grandkids, both in Israel and within the United States?

In 10 years it will be their world, their consequences, all of it from the hand of our own President Obama who thinks he did the world a favor.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller IndecentProposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.Website: www.jackengelhard.com