The real message to Israelis from Americans

Editor's note: The following commentary originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post. For more, click here.

The White House is contending that Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel as president underlines his administration’s commitment to Israel’s security.

Rarely, however, has the style and symbolism of a political maneuver been more distant from the underlying substance.

Click here for full JPost coverage of Obama's visit to Israel

Obama has consistently demonstrated, both in his rhetoric and policies, that of all US presidents since 1948, he is the most hostile to Israel. Now safely reelected, he travels to Israel on his terms, with no potential domestic political downsides for saying things he knows Israelis (and most Americans) don’t want to hear.

Obama will have two basic messages, one relating to the Palestinians and the other to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In both Israel and the United States, the media and the political classes will likely focus on the Palestinian question, but in truth, the Iran message will be the more chilling and potentially dangerous.

In his 2009 UN General Assembly speech, Obama demonstrated what he thinks of Israel’s need for secure borders: he couldn’t care less. In that speech, Obama supported a Palestinian state “with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.”

In subsequent speeches, he referred to the “1967 borders with agreed upon swaps” as his preferred outcome for Israeli- Palestinian negotiations.

Such a conclusion would inevitably leave Israel perpetually at risk of attack from “Palestine” and its radical allies.

And on the larger question – what kind of Palestinian state will exist within whatever borders are eventually delineated? – Obama’s overall Middle Eastern policy shows he is essentially indifferent.

How else can one explain his repeated references to al-Qaida being “on the road to defeat,” including just five days before Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues were killed in Benghazi? How else can one explain Obama’s comfort with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, despite President Mohamed Morsi’s repeated anti-Semitic remarks, and his repeated intimations (or worse) that the Camp David accords should be abrogated? Since, in Obama’s view, the global war on terror is essentially over, why should Israel worry? But while the media and politicians obsess about lines being drawn on the West Bank, the tougher, potentially mortal message will be Obama’s insistence that Israel not use preemptive military force against Iran’s extensive and growing nuclear infrastructure.

In reality, the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program puts the Palestinian issue into the proper perspective. And despite extensive administration bluster about “keeping all options on the table,” the chances of Obama actually using force against Iran’s nuclear program are as close to absolute zero as one can get except in outer space. He wants to reduce Israel’s odds of using force to the same level, and that is his trip’s highest priority.

So here’s the real message to Israelis from Americans: Whatever our religious backgrounds, we do not agree with Obama’s views on Israel or the Middle East.

So, be polite and respectful to the leader of the free world, but don’t confuse what Obama says with what the American people actually believe.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a Fox News contributor. He is a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

View the original article here

To win, GOP must hammer on limited government message

Rand Paul’s filibuster last week to smoke out the Obama administration’s position about using drones on U.S. soil was a principled act. — He was defending Americans’ right to due process of law in face of the sovereign monopoly on the use of force. Yet, the episode demonstrated why Republicans face difficulties establishing their party as a defender of personal liberty and wining national elections.

The Obama administration could offer no justification, other than expediency, for why Americans on U.S. soil, who may be illegally conspiring with terrorists but posing no eminent threat, should not be arrested and tried in a court of law instead of being killed by executive order through a robotic device.  

Yet, Republican Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham, without offering any better reason,chided Senator Paul and denied Republicans the opportunity to establish the GOP as the assured defender of every American’s right to security of person and protection from arbitrary government violence—something President Obama and Attorney Holder seem hesitant to embrace or understand.

To win elections, Republicans must embrace limited government, beyond how much the government taxes and spends, to situations they find discomforting.

On immigration, contraception, gay rights and other social issues, President Obama’s positions are also premised on expediency—maintaining a Democratic coalition of minorities, women and gays—with little respect for the rule of law or constitutionally guaranteed liberties. Yet, over and over again, Republicans come up short and fragmented in their responses.

Some plan must be devised to deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States. Deporting all or most of them would cripple the U.S. economy after countenancing their presence and practical contributions to our society for so many years. And failing to offer some pathway to legitimacy and forcing them permanently into the shadows and denying them legal protections violates the basic human rights the United States has espoused and defended at home and abroad for generations.

Senator Marco Rubio and other Republicans are correct to condition enactment of such a naturalization process to finally securing U.S. borders. President Obama’s opposition to guaranteed border security in exchange for a pathway to citizenship is nothing less than political expediency in his quest for Hispanic votes—this at the expense of restoring rule of law to U.S. immigration policy, protecting American workers from unfair competition from illegal immigrants working in exploitive conditions, and ensuring the problem of millions of illegal immigrants does not reemerge 10 or 20 years from now.

When conservative Republicans oppose any naturalization process, because desperate people illegally snuck across the border while most Americans looked the other way and profited from their presence, or merely embrace naturalization out of political necessity, they permit liberal pundits to tag the GOP as the “White Guys Club.”

The ObamaCare requirement that church-related organizations offer employees health insurance and provide contraceptive drugs and devices—even though those are widely and inexpensively available—is not about a woman’s right to choose. Rather, it is about the federal government negating religious freedom by forcing one person to pay for another person’s birth control choices.

Yet, the opposition of many Republicans to any government support for contraception, even for poor women, is an equal affront to religious personal choices, and permits liberals in the media to characterize their posture as a “Republican War on Women.”

On gay rights, Republicans should simply heed former New York Mayor Giuliani’s admonition to stay out of people’s bedrooms. Moderate voters—who determine the outcome of elections—have quite widely varying views about homosexuality, but generally they believe that the government has no right to interfere with personal sexual choices that do not impact on others.

To win elections, Republicans must embrace limited government, beyond how much the government taxes and spends, to situations they find discomforting—the choices most Americans have already made about the rights of illegal immigrants, poor women, gays, and whoever else may violate their private sensibilities.

Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and widely published columnist. Follow him on Twitter @PMorici1.

View the original article here

Sheryl Sandberg's misguided message

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gets around. She runs a multi-billion dollar company; she gives high profile speaking engagements; and now she’s a first-time author. Her new book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead” is a spin-off of Sandberg’s infamous TED talk, where she encouraged women to put their careers front and center and let the rest of life fall into place.

For her own accomplishments, Sandberg has been ranked one of the 50 “Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune magazine, one of the “Women to Watch” by The Wall Street Journal, one of “the world’s 100 most powerful women” by Forbes, one of the 50 “Most Influential Jews” by the Jerusalem Post, and one of the “25 Most Influential People on the Web” by Business Week.

But Ms. Sandberg is best known for something else altogether: her crusade against gender imbalance at work and at home. Sandberg believes women are penalized at work due to gender stereotypes and are unduly burdened at home. This is the reason there are so few women at the top, she says. The only way to achieve equality is for men and women to live identical lives.

Given that most women want a balanced life, shouldn’t they benefit from advice that will allow them to achieve their goal?

And Sandberg’s going to show us how. As the mother of two young children, Sandberg prides herself on having a “50-50” marriage: one in which both parents share equally in all breadwinning and all childcare. But what does this mean in real life? It means both parents leave their homes each morning and return each evening—and pay other people (i.e. less educated women) to do the bulk of the parenting work for them.

That’s fine if you’re the Sandbergs and can afford Mary Poppins. Most cannot.

But the greater problem with Sandberg’s proposal is that it dismisses maternal desire. That women can run companies and outwork the hardest working of men is not in question. What is in question is this: Do they want to?

Increasingly, the answer is no. According to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center, the opinions of mothers who’ve chosen to stay home—a highly educated group, I might add—have changed dramatically. Today, a mere 16 percent say they’d like to work full-time outside the home, down from 24 percent who felt that way in 1997.

Moreover, nearly half of all full-time moms say not working at all outside the home is the ideal situation. In 1997, 39 percent felt this way. Even mothers who do work full-time and year-round wish they didn’t! Only twenty-one percent of employed mothers say full-time work is “ideal.”

There’s simply no question that part-time work has become the number one choice of most women with children—both here and abroad. Part-time is defined as anything under 35 hours (though it includes mothers who work as little as one day a week), and people who work fewer than 35 hours a week do not become CEOs.

Given that most women want a balanced life, shouldn’t they benefit from advice that will allow them to achieve their goal? That’s not what Sheryl Sandberg offers.

Sandberg encourages women to pattern their lives after hers. But the only way to *be* Sheryl Sandberg is not only to be fabulously wealthy but to be comfortable being away from one’s home and children all day, every day. And that’s not what most women want.
It’s not what kids want either.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department and dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, hit that nerve last summer in The Atlantic. In her article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” Slaughter said she could no longer deny that her sons need her. She conceded that the “feminist beliefs” by which she’d built her entire career “were shifting under my feet.” So she quit her big Washington  job, where she worked with powerhouses such as Hillary Clinton, and went back to being a professor so she could be more available to her children.

Sheryl Sandberg is not this candid. The closest she's come to discussing her personal life is when she admitted it’s difficult to leave a toddler who’s pulling on your leg, begging you to stay with him, as you walk out the door each morning. But for Sandberg, that’s where the conversation ends. For most women, that’s where the conversation begins.

Sheryl Sandberg’s message—that women should not “lean back” in their careers to accommodate their desire for motherhood—is a terrible one. A woman’s life has seasons, and mapping it out by incorporating everything women want—work and family—is both prudent and smart.

Sandberg is right about one thing. Women who do "lean back" at work in order to make room for the rest of life probably won’t get the corner office. What she doesn’t appreciate is that they just don’t care.

Suzanne Venker is a vice president at the The Center for Marriage Policy and has written extensively about politics, parenting, and the influence of feminism on American society. Her latest book, "How to Choose a Husband and Make Peace with Marriage," is now available at Amazon. Also available is her new Kindle Single, "The War on Men." For more on Suzanne, visit www.suzannevenker.com and www.howtochooseahusband.com.

View the original article here