Bless Them that Bless Thee . . .

By Jack Kinsella
The Omega Letter

In spite of the fact that most Israelis believed at the time that Bill Clinton was a great friend to Israel, until Bill Clinton presided over the Oslo signing on the lawn of the Rose Garden in 1993, Israel controlled all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, all of the Golan Heights and was largely considered by the Arab world to be invincible.

Before an enemy could hope to push through to Jerusalem, it would have to fight all the way through the West Bank from the Jordan, all the way through the Golan from Syria, all the way across the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and still be strong enough to make it across the Green Line to link up with the armies approaching from the other directions.

It was Israel’s possession of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan that prevented the surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973 from succeeding. It took Israel almost a week to recover and launch a counter-offensive.

Had Egypt not had to first overcome Israeli positions in Gaza, Jordan the West Bank, and Syria the Golan, Israel would have been annihilated during those first few days.

Today, the same attack would be launched from inside Gaza, from Bethlehem and from atop the Golan. Israel wouldn't have days to regroup - at best it might have hours. All of Israel’s 1973 defensive perimeter has been negotiated away.

By the end of the Clinton administration, 95% of Israel’s defensive buffer was on the table. When George Bush came to office he announced that the centerpiece of his Middle East foreign policy was to oversee the creation of a Palestinian State.

By the end of the Bush administration, the rest of the world was already referring to Judea and Samaria as ‘Palestine’ and the main stumbling block to peace was the question of how best to divide what had only twenty years before been “Israel’s eternal and indivisible capital” in Jerusalem.

Under the Obama administration, the Israelis are barely part of the negotiation process. Abbas whines, Obama imposes, Israel capitulates.

And today, people are openly talking about the previously-unthinkable possibility of the impending collapse of the most powerful nation the world has ever known.

I don’t believe in coincidences.

In an article in the Jerusalem Post by Isi Leibler called “Candidly Speaking: Harper and Obama on Israel", Isia Leibler wrote this:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper has unquestionably emerged as Israel’s greatest friend in the world, effectively assuming the role previously occupied by former Australian prime minister John Howard.

Harper’s principled approach to Israel was demonstrated in an extraordinary address he gave in Ottawa to an interparliamentary conference for combating anti-Semitism. Courageously dismissing the traditional political correctness expressed by many liberals, who feel obliged to distance themselves from the Jewish state, Harper made it clear that under his leadership Canada would not “pretend” to be impartial on Israel even if that meant facing negative repercussions at the UN and other international organizations.”

Wow! Canada ‘s Prime Minister is now unquestionably Israel’s greatest friend in the world? That’s a pretty exclusive club – “greatest” means there can be only one. Liebler continues;

Canada was in fact “punished” for its support of Israel when it was ignominiously defeated by Portugal, an almost bankrupt country, in its attempt to obtain a seat at the UN Security Council. All 57 seats of the Organization of the Islamic Conference opposed the Canadian nomination.

For some, Canada’s defeat under such circumstances will be viewed as a badge of honor. But what made Canada’s defeat even more outrageous was the role of the US. According to Richard Grenfell, a former press officer with the US mission to the UN, “US State Department insiders say that US Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn’t campaign for Canada’s election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weekend leading up to the heated contest.”

David Frum, a speechwriter to former president George W. Bush, also noted that “the US government has kept awfully quite about the suggestion that it went missing during the Security Council vote.”

The US betrayal of its neighbor and long-standing ally is a chilling indication of the depths to which the Obama administration has stooped in its efforts to “engage” and appease Islamic and Third World rogue states.

Sadly, it’s pretty hard to disagree with either Frum’s observation or Liebler’s characterization of it as a ‘betrayal’. I could have never imagined a scenario in which America stands against Canada because of Canadian support for Israel!

Indeed, it is hard to imagine Washington opposing Canada at the UN for any reason. For all our nationalist pride, the two nations are inextricably interconnected.

It is almost as unimaginable as, I dunno, the US government standing against Arizona at the UN . . . but that’s crazy talk!

The JP article continues, listing many examples of recent assaults against Israel emanating from President Obama from foreign capitals such as his criticism of Israel from Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Speaking of crazy talk, here’s how Leibler concluded the piece, and then we’ll come full circle:

[It] would perhaps be an impossible dream to have someone of the caliber of Stephen Harper leading the US, but alas, today, we are becoming increasingly reconciled to the reality that the US president is no friend of Israel and is paving the way for an imposed settlement with potentially disastrous long-term repercussions on the security of our nation.

According to the UN National Debt Clock, at the time of this writing, your share of the debt as a citizen is $44,217.00. But of course, not all citizens pay federal taxes.

Exclude little kids, families with a single breadwinner, and more than half of all working Americans who get ‘refunds’ for taxes paid by others, and it works out to, (at the time of this writing) $124,579 – oops, $124,580 per taxpayer.

Go to the bottom of the debt clock where it includes all the unfunded liabilities (stuff we promised but don’t have the money to pay for, like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.) and the total indebtedness per US taxpayer is . . . drum roll please. . . over a MILLION dollars.

One million, forty-two thousand, four hundred and eight dollars, to be painfully precise. (oops, make that four hundred and nine).

“Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

Back in the 1960’s Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau characterized Canada’s position as being like a mouse sleeping with an elephant – the point being that what is a twitch to the elephant can be a mortal threat to the mouse.

In every US economic downturn of my lifetime, it hit Canada harder and the Canadian version lasted longer. But despite America’s economic woes, Canada’s business fortunes for 2011 are surprisingly optimistic.

Canada has a debt clock and it also has a debt problem. The Canadian national debt is almost six hundred billion dollars – but since Canada’s economy and population are much smaller, and numbers like billion and trillion are too vast to contemplate, the only real comparison that is valid is the taxpayer share.

In 2009, the US individual share of the national debt was $310,000 – today it is over one million dollars per citizen. In Canada, it is $16K.

“I will bless them that bless thee” the Bible says. That is why I don’t believe in coincidences.

God keeps His promises.

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