Ilario Pantano: Masada shall not fail again -- unless Obama says so! National Review Exclusive.

Pantano Article Responding to Obama's Betrayal of Israel Featured by National Review
We are honored to announce that Ilario's article, "Masada Shall Not Fall, Unless Obama Says So" written in response to Obama's betrayal of Israel has been featured by the National Review. The National Review and National Review Online "are America’s most widely read and influential magazine and website for Republican/conservative news, commentary and opinion."  Ilario's article, pasted below in its entirety, may be found online at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/267892/masada-shall-not-fall-again-unless-obama-says-so-ilario-pantano




A shocking, sobering and uplifting essay on Israel's past, present, and future. And where we fit, if at all.

By Ilario Pantano / May 23, 2011

As 18-year-old Marines in the first Gulf War, we joked that “Onward, Christian Soldiers” was the Kuwaiti, Bahraini, and Saudi national anthem. Today it would be ’N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye.”

It was just a few years after that first war where the U.S. liberated Muslims from other Muslims that I was in Israel training as a young Sniper. The antiquity, the resolve, and the true grit of the place had always fascinated me.

The Israeli people have a kind of cultural toughness that only comes when entire limbs of your family tree have been sawed off. When parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles have been exterminated before your eyes, you have a deeper appreciation for security than the average Joe. The sense of history and mission is reinforced by the swearing-in ceremony of IDF soldiers who, after climbing to the top of Masada, declare before God that it “shall never fall again.”

I have stood at the top of Masada, and looked out to see the desolate landscape where the Romans once laid siege to the Jews. Today, after Obama’s infamous Middle East speech, all of Israel stands there, alone and abandoned.

At best, Obama has established a framework for dismantling the Jewish state as we know it. At worst, Obama has accelerated the likelihood of a regional war, which may or may not have been inevitable, by forcing Israel into a display of force to Iran.

America has definitively demonstrated that we are not serious about protecting our tiny ally. And like the others that this administration has betrayed, from the Saudis to the Poles, the Israelis will be forced to make their own “arrangements.” 

As 200 North Korean nuclear engineers are busy developing Iran’s missile and nuclear-warhead capabilities, Israeli commanders are reviewing maps and plans. First to go would be the recently activated Bushehr facility, which the Russians just put the finishing touches on this month.

Then there are at least eleven other sites that would need to be hit, including Natanz. That figure does not include other Iranian missile-launch facilities such as those being built in Venezuela. I pray we are not counting on the Israelis to hit those, too.

We can hope that it stops with airstrikes, but some of us know that once you let slip the dogs of war, there is just no telling what will happen — especially when hot war with Israel might be the only glue to help the mullahs maintain power in Iran as the gale of the “Arab Spring” continues to blow.

The biggest disappointment for me personally is that none of this comes as a surprise. Of course there was no mention of Israeli natural-gas shipments being turned off by the new Egyptian government, which we will supposedly subsidize.

Naturally there was no outrage that Hamas, when not busy pursuing “peace” with Israel or calling Israel’s creation a “catastrophe,” is busy calling Osama bin Laden a “hero.”

While none of Obama’s speech bears repeating, this statement from Hamas does: “We regard this [killing of Bin Laden] as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood. We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”

The Left might want you to forget that this is the same Hamas that Israelis are supposed to trust with their lives, but I won’t.



I’m not surprised by the silence, spelled C-O-W-A-R-D-I-C-E, from the likes of Rep. Anthony Wiener, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They have made their bed.

Eric Golub nailed the point in the Washington Times: “It is time for Jewish liberals to realize that they can no longer be both. Either their religion is Judaism or liberalism. Either thousands of years of religious tradition means something or it doesn’t. The days when Jewish liberal women care more about abortion than Israel needs to end. The days when liberal Jews consider global warming to be the real Holocaust needs to stop. The Democratic Party of old is dead.”

Where is the Church? Where are the defenders of the faith, now? What has happened to their tongue?

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet,
till her vindication shines out like the dawn,
her salvation like a blazing torch.
Isaiah 62.1

What does it mean for a society when we can quote more lines from Charlie Sheen and Arnold Schwarzenegger than we can from the scriptures? Has the relentless anti-Christian, anti-faith messaging of the mainstream media finally broken the backs of Main Street? Have we grazed on the moral equivalency offered up by our sitcoms and our gossip magazines to the point where we are so bloated we don’t even have the strength to push away from the table?

Are we, the believers, satisfied to be beaten into submission when the Left calls defending traditional marriage “hate speech”? Is it okay with you when defenders of the unborn are mocked and called extremists in the same breath as the Taliban? “Tolerance” has become the new code word for intolerance.

The purveyors of political correctness have made standing for nothing more honorable than standing for something. Christ was nailed to a cross for us, but today we are afraid to step out of our comfort zone to tell the truth. Is that what it means to be a practicing Christian or Jew in the 21st century?

It is not enough that we have allowed God to be chased out of the classroom, the courtroom, and the fox hole. Now, with the surrender of Jerusalem, we are allowing God to be chased out of the Holy Land. Don’t just sit there shaking your head.

A Tunisian man doused himself with gasoline over his street cart. What will you do to defend your faith and our Holy Land? While you search deep to figure that out, make a commitment with me now that “Masada shall never fall again.”

— Ilario Pantano is author of Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy.

Another stunner behind Obama's Libya doctrine. You won't believe who helped devise policy used by president. Or maybe you will.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

Make a peanut butter sandwich and put on your seat belt. This is long and involved, but it's a must-read. This story has been on the Internet for a day or two, but it's got good shelf life. Had to pass it along.



Posted: March 29, 2011

By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Hanan Ashrawi

TEL AVIV – A staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

As WND first reported, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world's leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine's main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros.

The doctrine and its founders, as WND reported, have been deeply tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

See what it's going to take to stop CAIR and the "Muslim Mafia" from Islamizing America

Now it has emerged that Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi served on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect.

That commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term "Responsibility to Protect," while defining its guidelines.

Ashrawi is an infamous defender of Palestinian terrorism. Her father, Daoud Mikhail, was a co-founder of the PLO with Arafat. The PLO was engaged in scores of international terrorist acts and was declared a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1987.

During the First Palestinian Intifada, or war of "resistance" against Israel, in 1988, Ashrawi joined what was known as the Intifada Political Committee, which sought to advance Palestinian goals through both politics and "resistance." She served there until 1993.

In 1991, Arafat appointed Ashrawi to serve as the PLO's Minister of Higher Education and Research. The Palestinian school system is notorious for its glorification of "martyrdom," or suicide bombings, and has long preached against the existence of Israel.

Discover the Networks notes Ashrawi has long defended the Hamas terror group as a legitimate component of the Palestinian "political spectrum."

She has stated she does not "think of Hamas as a terrorist group."

"We coordinate [with Hamas] politically," she said in April 1993, "the people we know and talk to are not terrorists."

In 1998 Ashrawi founded MIFTAH, a nonprofit that seeks to undermine Israel's legitimacy and refers to that Jewish state's 1948 creation as "Al Nakba," or "The Catastrophe."

Ashrawi has long been a Holocaust denier. In the July 2, 1998, edition of the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, she published an article calling the Holocaust "a deceitful myth, which the Jews have … exploited to get sympathy."

In 2001 Ashrawi became a spokeswoman for the Arab League.

Notably, Amre Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, served as an adviser to the same 2001 commission that invented the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine.

Ashrawi, meanwhile, was a protégé and later colleague and close friend of late Columbia University Professor Edward Said, another notorious apologist for Palestinian terrorism.

Said was replaced by Rashid Khalidi, a close personal friend to Obama.

Soros funded doctrine

With Ashrawi on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine.

In his address to the nation on Monday, Obama specifically cited the military doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

Indeed, the Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of "Responsibility to Protect."

"Responsibility to Protect," or "Responsibility to Act" as cited by Obama is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."

The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has also been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world's leading champion of the military doctrine.

Two of global group's advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur and Gareth Evans, are the original founders of the "Responsibility" doctrine, with the duo even coining the term "Responsibility to Protect."

Soros' Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are ... instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."

Obama cited doctrine multiple times

Aside from his direct citation of the "Responsibility" doctrine in his address explaining why the U.S. is acting against Libya, Obama alluded to the doctrine four more times in his speech.

The following are relevant excerpts from his address, with references to U.S. "responsibility" in bold:

In this effort, the United States has not acted alone. Instead, we have been joined by a strong and growing coalition. This includes our closest allies – nations like the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey – all of whom have fought by our side for decades. And it includes Arab partners like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, who have chosen to meet their responsibility to defend the Libyan people.

Last night, NATO decided to take on the additional responsibility of protecting Libyan civilians.

To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are.

The task that I assigned our forces – to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a No Fly Zone – carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.


Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states' borders'

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."

In the article, Soros said "true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."

"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.

"In particular, the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict," he concluded.

More Soros ties

Responsibility founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chair, with Gregorian on the advisory board of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term "Responsibility to Protect."

In his capacity as co-chair, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to "sovereignty as responsibility."

Evans presented "Responsibility to Protect" at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.

Evans sits on multiple boards with Soros, including the Clinton Global Initiative.

Thakur is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded by Soros.

Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.

Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

WND also reported the crisis group has also petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.

Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.

'One World Order'

WND also reported that doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a "New World Order."

"Toward a new world order," Thakur wrote in a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution."

He was referring there to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote.

"A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train," he added.

Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."

Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of 'superior' western power."

Power pushes doctrine

Doctrine founder Evans, meanwhile, is closely tied to Obama aide Samantha Power.

Evans and Power have been joint keynote speakers at events in which they have championed the "Responsibility to Protect" principle together, such as the 2008 Global Philanthropy Forum, also attended by Tutu.

Then last November, at the International Symposium on Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Power, attending as a representative of the White House, argued for the use of "Responsibility to Protect" alongside Evans.

With research by Chris Elliott

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=281065

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