I could not participate in a One Jerusalem bloggers interview with Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, this afternoon. But Glick was good enough to grant bloggers an opportunity to discuss her new book “Shackled Warrior”. “Shackled Warriors” is an edited compilation of her brilliant Jerusalem Post columns. From One Jerusalem.org:
Listen now to the latest exclusive One Jerusalem Bloggers Conference Call with Caroline Glick, world journalist, policy-analyst and author of, Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad.
Caroline raises important points about the future of Israel, the centrality of Jerusalem, Barak Obama's anti-Israel advisers, Israel's penchant for self-destruction, and what American supporters of Israel can do.
Order the book from Amazon, or if sold out, get it direct from the publisher.
bloggers on the call: Omri from Mere Rhetoric, Ralph from the Hedgehog blog, Oceanguy, Rick Richman from Jewish Current Issues, Richard Baehr from American Thinker, David Bogner from Treppenwitz, Anne from Boker Tov, Jim Hoft from Gateway Pundit, and Bennett from Daled Amos.
Some of Gordon's observations:
Glick was trenchant and quite clear in her views. In response to questions from bloggers, Glick addressed topics like the corruption of Israel’s political system, defeatism of its elites, the yearning patriotism of its citizens, the tethering of Israeli policy to our State Department and implicitly, Saudis interests, the ‘crash of the peace process’, the craziness of the Gaza ‘hudna’ with Hamas, and the pathological abandonment for one half million Israeli citizens in the South and Western Negev.
Glick also gave views on why the Sunni Arabs will not combat the “rising Shia crescent” in the Middle east given the coup d’etat in Lebanon by Hezbollah. Why Russia and China are basically spoilers and why the US presence in Iraq is important in the ‘long war’ against Islamist Jihad in the region. She also opines on the Obama campaign insistence on dividing Jerusalem, ceding Samaria and Judea as abandoning not only Israel’s national and existential interests but also western values given its centrality in our Judeo Christian beliefs. She consider the three fifths of American Jews who would vote for Obama given his allies and objectives as delusional. But in the end she has hope for Israel and America given our vibrancy and dynamism and commitment to core values of individuals, personal responsibility and freedom. This was mind blowing stuff from a valued Jewish and Israeli public intellectual.According to Glick Israel desperately needs a political system and leaders who are accountable to their citizens and not to the corrupting proportional form of voting for party lists. In her opinion it discourages political and moral courage. That in her view could only come with direct election of Knesset members. She backs Bibi because of a possible shift to individual direct elections in the Knesset and the continued benefits of his economic reforms via privatization of ’sclerotic’ quasi government enterprises and tax incentives for investments. She noted that the US adopted a similar proportional party list system in Iraq, that produced the same system of cronyism.Glick noted the fifth police investigation of another corruption charge against PM Olmert and a proposed law co-sponsored by Yossi Beilin and a Communist MK to ‘out’ the PM. All that would do in her opinion would be to retain the Kadima regime.Given Barak’s meeting with Egyptian Intelligence Chief Suleiman in Jerusalem yesterday all that would do is to engage in a crazy “hudna” or cease fire in Gaza. Hamas, Iran’s Proxy, she noted would have control over the Egyptian border control points to infiltrate ever more and larger weapons. It would in her view amount to a ‘temporary lull’ in the murder of Israeli citizens, especially in the South and the Western Negev. It is ‘pathological’ she said to continue exposing one half million Israeli citizens to daily murderous rocket threats, while giving lip service as Barak has to ‘fortifying’ their towns.
[...]
Iran has spun their doctrine of hate so that it resonates with the nearly century old Arab hatred for the Jewish presence in the MIddle East.
Iran according to her, has simply played on the sympathy by focusing on Israel as the enemy. Iran has not only neutralize the Sunnis, but it now controls Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, which large Shia populations.Regarding the regional geopolitical interests of China and Russia, Glick opined that they ‘cherished’ their roles as spoilers and do not consider themselves as front line JIhadist states. Both Countries have essentially neutered economic sanctions against a Nuclear Iran, and supplied them with both nuclear technology and military gear.She noted that one of the chapters in her new book dealt with her experience as an embedded journalist with the 3rd Infantry Division in the assaults on Baghdad during the war in Iraq. That war was, she believes, was transformed by the ’surge’ strategy of U.S. Army General Petreaus because it was a conscious decision to win. But it also reflected a strategic judgment call, that Glick attributed to AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, that Iraq was not a local war, but a regional one. A war in which Iran with Syrian assistance and “pan Arabist Islamist foot soldiers from Libya and Saudi Arabia” used to foment “chaos” in the region using Iranian supplied equipment and IRGC Al quds force leaders.
Glick noted that overwhelming Israel’s are patriotic over 87% in one survey she cited. In contrast, there is, according to Glick, a huge gulf with the ruling Israeli elites, who as she noted, neither have children serving in the IDF, let along living there. That includes the PM and DPM’s progeny. They live in the fleshpots of Eurabia.She makes it very plain what she expects when it comes to Obama’s candidacy and American Jews. They shouldn’t vote for him because he is “backed by anti-Semites” and willing to talk with them, Ahmadinejad, for starters.She considers it a ’shander’ that 60% of American Jews polled would vote for Obama. Ironically if he did get elected this fall, the best thing that would happen according to Glick would be that Israel could no longer take ‘orders’ from our State Department.A question was posed about what American Jews should do given this background. She said that American Jews have to educate their youth about their Jewish identity and connection to Israel. She noted the work by my friend Charles Jacobs of the David project in training youths for Israel advocacy at both the College and high school level
