Hagel's possible nomination proves Obama's anti Israel

Chuck Hagel's Jewish Problem - Bret Stephens
Chuck Hagel, the former GOP senator from Nebraska who is now a front-runner to be the next Secretary of Defense, carried on about how "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." The word "intimidates" ascribes to the so-called Jewish lobby powers that are at once vast, invisible and malevolent; and suggests that legislators who adopt positions friendly to that lobby are doing so not from political conviction but out of personal fear.
    In 2002, a year in which 457 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks (a figure proportionately equivalent to more than 20,000 fatalities in the U.S., or seven 9/11s), Hagel weighed in with the advice that "Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace."
    In 2006, Hagel described Israel's war against Hizbullah as "the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon." He later refused to sign a letter calling on the EU to designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. In 2007, he voted against designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization. (Wall Street Journal)

Josh Rogin Foreign  Affairs

Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, rumored to be in contention for the job of defense secretary, has a long record of opposing sanctions on countries including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, and Cuba.

Hagel, who serves as co-chair of President Barack Obama's intelligence advisory board, throughout his career has publicly supported the idea of engaging with rogue regimes and focusing on diplomacy before punitive measures. While in Congress, he voted against several sanctions measures and argued vociferously against their effectiveness.

"Engagement is not appeasement. Diplomacy is not appeasement. Great nations engage. Powerful nations must be the adults in world affairs. Anything less will result in disastrous, useless, preventable global conflict," Hagel said in a Brookings Institution speech in 2008.

In 2008, Hagel was blamed for blocking an Iran sanctions bill that Senate Democrats supported. That same year, he gave a speech calling for the opening of a U.S. diplomatic post in Tehran. As early as 2001, Hagel said that sanctions on Iran and Libya were ineffective. He was one of only two senators that year to vote against renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, along with Sen.Richard Lugar (R-IN).

In his 2008 book, America: Our Next Chapter, Hagel wrote, "America's refusal to recognize Iran's status as a legitimate power does not decrease Iran's influence, but rather increases it."

That same year, Hagel praised the George W. Bush administration's deal with North Korea, which included lifting some sanctions on Pyongyang and removing North Korea from the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism in exchange for greater transparency into North Korea's nuclear program. North Korea later reneged on its side of that bargain.

"The last thing we want to do or should do in my opinion is try to isolate North Korea," Hagel saidin 2003. "They are very dangerous, they're unpredictable, and they have a past behavior pattern that's a bit erratic. That is not good news for any of us. So I think we keep the emotions down and keep working the channels."

On Syria, Hagel was a longtime supporter of engagement with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Hafez al-Assad. After meeting with Assad the elder in 1998, Hagel said, "Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn't come at the end of a bayonet or the end of a gun."

In 2008, Hagel co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with prospective secretary of state nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), entitled, "It's time to talk to Syria."

"Syria's leaders have always made cold calculations in the name of self-preservation, and history shows that intensive diplomacy can pay off," Hagel and Kerry wrote.

Hagel has long been a critic of the multi-decade U.S. embargo on Cuba. He has said the trade embargo on Cuba "isolates us, not Cuba," and voted several times to ease parts of it.

"On Cuba, I've said that we have an outdated, unrealistic, irrelevant policy," he said in 2008. "It's always been nonsensical to me about this argument, 'Well, it's a communist country, it's a communist regime.' What do people think Vietnam is? Or the People's Republic of China? Both those countries are WTO members. We trade with them. We have relations. Great powers engage...  Great powers are not afraid. Great powers trade."

That same year, Hagel signed onto a letter to Secretary State Condoleezza Rice urging her to alter U.S.-Cuba policy. In 2002, Hagel called then leader Fidel Castro a "toothless old dinosaur" and said he agreed with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on Cuba.

"What Jimmy Carter's saying ... is exactly right: Our 40-year policy toward Cuba is senseless," Hagel said.

In 2000, Hagel fought against legislation that would have granted citizenship to Cuban refugeeElian Gonzales.

"Chuck Hagel, like many other great national security strategists including Bob Gates and Brent Scowcroft, thinks that unilateral sanctions fashioned by emotion rather than strategic interests make no sense," said Steve Clemons, editor at large for the Atlantic and a longtime Hagel supporter.

"In many of the cases that sanctions resolutions appeared in the Senate," Clemons said, "sanctions by the U.S., unaccompanied by global support, actually reduce America's leverage in seducing or compelling a problematic nation from taking a different course."

 

Obama backs Muslim Brotherhood terrorists

Obama doubles down on the Muslim Brotherhood

Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:05 PM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

The Muslim Brotherhood is a virulently anti-Western Islamist outfit committed to the destruction of Israel. Its history of engaging in and supporting terrorism is beyond dispute.

President Obama backs the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He backed it, for example, when the military tried to stand up against Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood man who heads the Egyptian government, and when he made Morsi look like the hero of Hamas’ recent mini-victory over Israel.

But in backing Morsi, Obama can claim that he is simply recognizing the reality that Morsi is the elected leader of Egypt. It’s a weak argument because, elected or not, Morsi is an anti-western, anti-Israeli Islamist whose intentions are malicious. We don’t have to back our enemies just because they win elections. Heck, Obama sees no need to back our friends on this basis. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu.

In any event, we now learn (from Jonathan Spyer, via Barry Rubin) that Obama has decided to back the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Here, we aren’t talking about backing an elected government; rather, the issue is which rebel group to support.

As Spyer shows, Obama’s “intention is to align with and strengthen Muslim Brotherhood-associated elements, while painting Salafi forces as the sole real Islamist danger.” Meanwhile, “secular forces are ignored or brushed aside.”

Spyer ponts to the new military council that Obama is backing:

The founder of the Free Syrian Army, the secular former Syrian Air Force Colonel Riad Asaad, is notably absent. General Mustafa al-Sheikh, the first of his rank to defect to the rebels, is also not there. Sheikh is known for his fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hussein Haj Ali, the highest ranking officer to defect so far, was similarly absent.

A Reuters report on the new joint military council calculated that the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies account for about two thirds of the 263 men who met in Antaliya and formed the new body. Salafi commanders are also there.

The new council is headed by Brigadier Selim Idriss, who is described as a non-ideological military man. But his deputies, Abdel-basset Tawil of Idleb and Abdel-qader Saleh of Aleppo governate are associated with the Salafi trend.

The same picture emerges from an anlysis of the new civilian leadership body – the Syrian National Coalition:

The leader of this coalition is Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib, former Imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Khatib is closely associated with the Damascus Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The leader of the new coalition has a long history of antisemitic, anti-western and anti-Shia remarks (he praised Saddam Hussein, for example, for ‘terrifying the Jews’ and wrote an article asking if Facebook was an ‘American-Israeli intelligence website.’) He is also an admirer of the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Within the body headed by Khatib, the Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council controls around 27 of the 65 seats on the executive body of the new coalition. There are also Islamists and fellow travelers among the non-SNC delegates. The Brotherhood are by far the best organized single body within the coalition. One secular delegate at the first full meeting of the coalition accused the MB of “pushing more of its hawks into the coalition, although it already has half of the seats.”

In sum, the Obama administration is now backing a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated coalition as the preferred replacement for the Assad regime.

The excuse will be that the alternative is the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra organization. But Spyer insists that “the difference between [al-Nusra] and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups is one of degree, not of kind.” The “home grown, Muslim Brotherhood elements that the US is backing are no less anti-western and no less anti-Jewish,” he adds. Nor is it clear that the U.S. had no other alternatives.

In this regard, we should keep in mind that the Syrian incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood is even more militant than its counterparts elsewhere in the Middle East, according to Glenn Robinson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval Academy graduate school writing in the December issue of Current History. In this sense, Obama’s play in Syria amounts to more than a doubling down on the Brotherhood.

The bottom line, says Barry Rubin, is that if the Obama-backed group is Syria’s new government, then Syria now has an Islamist regime. And that, it now seems clear, is fine with Obama.

Now we know why Obama and Hillary let the 4 die in Ben Gazzi.

Now we know why Obama and Hillary let the 4 die in Ben Gazzi. To cover up the fact that the guns used were supplied by Obama. Treason anyone?
Benghazi Terrorists Armed By Obama
DECEMBER 12, 2012 BY KRIS ZANE 83 COMMENTS

When two weapons linked to Fast and Furious were discovered at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, the Obama Administration went into cover-up mode. They didn’t want America to know that they had been sending thousands of AK-47s to violent Mexican drug cartels in order to “trace” the weapons to the cartel kingpins.

Of course, it was all a scam to blame gun dealers on the border for feeding drug cartel violence and restricting Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
But what if this time it wasn’t thousands of AK-47s, but tens of thousands of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and shoulder-fired missiles? What if the Obama administration wasn’t supplying weapons to Mexican drug cartels, but Islamic extremists? And what if four Americans were murdered using these weapons?
History has repeated itself, as it always seems to do in the case of Barack Obama.
It has been reported that the arms used to murder the Americans at the Benghazi consulate and CIA safe house were supplied by Barack Hussein Obama. That the group responsible for the attack—Ansar al-Sharia—got the weapons from their sister organization, al-Qaeda, which received the weapons directly from Barack Obama as part of his “democratic moment” in toppling Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
If Obama would have let on that he knew the Islamic group Ansar al-Sharia was responsible for the attack of the Benghazi consulate, he would have risked America finding out he supplied the weapons. If he would have sent help to protect our brave men, some low-grade soldier might have picked up an RPG left behind and found Barack Obama’s fingerprints all over it; and the whole house of cards would have come tumbling down.
That is why there was the idiotic story of a “protest turned violent” from an obscure anti-Muslim YouTube video. That is why Obama refused to send help. That is why Obama had to blame “bad intelligence” for the story. That is why David Petraeus had to be purged from the CIA for refusing to play “pin the tail on the YouTube video.” And that is why the so-called “investigation” that Obama is conducting on the Benghazi attack will never be completed.
In legalese, we’d call this accessory before the fact. Barack Obama supplied the weapons that were used to kill Americans.
Most people would call such an act by a sitting President treason. All Congressional members should talk about impeachment. All Americans should demand it.

Crony capitalism at the heart of Obamacare

Crony capitalism at the heart of Obamacare
Posted: 11 Dec 2012 02:15 PM PST
(Paul Mirengoff)
Jeffrey Anderson at the Weekly Standard reports on an Obamacare related scandal at Kathleen Sibelius’ Department of HHS. According to Anderson’s source, HHS will use a subsidiary of a private health care company to build and police the insurance exchanges at the heart of Obamacare. And that private health

care company will be competing for business in these very exchanges.
Moreover, the person who ran the government entity that awarded the contract to the subsidiary has since accepted a position with a different subsidiary of the same parent company. And, in an attempt to hide this unseemly contract from public view until after the presidential election, HHS allegedly encouraged the company to hide the transaction from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Here are the ugly detaiils, as reported by Anderson:
In January, HHS awarded Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI) what the Hill describes as “a large contract to build a federal data services hub to help run the complex federal health insurance exchange.” At that time, the director of Obamacare’s newly established Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) — which the Hill describes as “the office tasked with crafting rules for the national exchange” — was Steve Larsen. Larsen had been the insurance commissioner for Maryland when Obama’s HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, was the insurance commissioner for Kansas, and the two are reportedly close. The CCIIO awarded the Obamacare exchange contract to QSSI while Larsen was the CCIIO’s director, and he played a central role in planning the construction of the exchanges — although it’s not known whether he made the decision to award the contract to QSSI or not.
Under the contract that it signed with HHS, QSSI’s power would be substantial — as QSSI would shape, run, and affect companies’ ability to compete to sell insurance through Obamacare’s federal exchanges. The Hill writes, “A draft statement of work for the contract awarded to QSSI states the contractor should provide services necessary to acquire, certify and decertify health plans offered on a federal exchange.” Moreover, “It stipulates the contractor should monitor agreements with health plans, ensure compliance with federal standards and” — somewhat strikingly — “take corrective action when necessary.”
QSSI, apparently realizing what a valuable asset it had in the contract, started shopping itself around. Meanwhile, Larsen left the CCIIO and took a highly paid position with Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, in June. Sometime this summer, UnitedHealth Group bought QSSI.
The Hill writes that the “quiet nature of the transaction, which was not disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has fueled suspicion among industry insiders that UnitedHealth Group may be gaining an advantage for its subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare.” The Hill adds, “One critic familiar with the business rivalries of the insurance industry compared UnitedHealth Group’s purchase of QSSI to the New York Yankees hiring the American League’s umpires.” In other words, UnitedHealth Group, through QSSI, would be able to police the same field in which it would be a competitor.
In addition, QSSI would have access to valuable data. The Obama administration likes to compare Obamacare’s prospective insurance exchanges to websites like Travelocity and Expedia, but the comparison is inapt. Travelocity and Expedia don’t regulate airlines, stipulate the length of runways, or transfer money from younger passengers to older ones. In truth, Obamacare’s federal exchanges will be an extremely complicated technical endeavor to set up and run, as (among other things) they would involve compiling massive amounts of risk-selection data on individual Americans. In addition to raising extraordinary privacy concerns, the data involved would be like gold to insurers. To quote my source, “If you can capture this data, you’re going to win.”
When HHS became aware of UnitedHealth Group’s purchase of QSSI, it couldn’t realistically void the contract, because the Obama administration was already too far behind in setting up the federal exchanges. To void the contract would mean delaying the exchanges’ implementation by many more months. The Hill writes: “[G]iven how late the administration has been in issuing rules for the exchanges, it would be extremely difficult to void a key contract, find another company to perform the work and still meet the 2014 deadline.”
Unwilling to void the contract, HHS instead went to work on setting up a firewall designed to block United-Health Group from gaining access to QSSI’s data, presumably out of a desire to keep UnitedHealth Group from gaining an unfair advantage. Then, likely in concert with the White House — and to the chagrin of many HHS employees — Sebelius and other senior HHS officials decided that word could too easily get out about the firewall project. If it did, it would alert people to UnitedHealth Group’s having gained a potentially huge competitive advantage — a political concern for the White House on the cusp of the election, especially in light of the crony capitalism charges that have plagued this administration. Therefore, HHS, under Sebelius’s leadership, suspended work on the firewall and told United-Health Group not to alert the SEC to the purchase — as UnitedHealth Group was legally required to do within four days of the transaction — until after the election.
As Anderson notes, “the idea of funneling about $1 trillion (according to the Congressional Budget Office) over Obamacare’s real first dozen years (2014-25) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to private insurance companies was always problematic.” But on top of that, the administration will use a subsidiary of one of those insurance companies as an architect and policeman of the exchanges through which this taxpayer money will flow; has enabled the first head of the CCIIO to profit personally from the venture; and may have told a private company to violate federal securities law in order to aid Obama’s reelection prospects.
Not bad for government work.

Not surprised Obama may nominate this anti ISRAEL guy as sec defense

Appointment of Hagel Would Be A “Slap in the Face” for Pro-Israel Americans

Hagel’s Weak Record Cited by Both Parties

Washington, D.C. (December 14, 2012) –The Republican Jewish Coalition today announced its opposition to the potential appointment of former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of Defense, citing a long list of actions Hagel has taken that raise alarms about his failure to support Israel.

• August 2006: Hagel was one of only 12 Senators who refused to write the EU asking them to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
• October 2000: Hagel was one of only 4 Senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.
• November 2001: Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to continue his policy of not meeting with the Yasir Arafat until the Palestinian leader took steps to end the violence against Israel.
• December 2005: Hagel was one of only 27 Senators who refused to sign a letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections.
• June 2004: Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran’s nuclear program at the G-8 summit.
• August 2006: Anti-Israel group CAIR wrote in praise of Hagel, “Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel…”
• March 2009: Hagel was one of 10 former and current foreign policy officials who signed a letter urging Pres. Obama to open direct talks with Hamas leaders.
• On Iran: Hagel, writing in a May 2006 article for The Financial Times, explicitly ruled out the military option against Iran that Pres. Obama claims to have ‘kept on the table.’

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said, “Chuck Hagel’s statements and actions regarding Israel have raised serious concerns for many Americans who care about Israel. The Jewish community and every American who supports a strong U.S.-Israel relationship have cause for alarm if the President taps Hagel for such an important post.  The appointment of Chuck Hagel would be a slap in the face for every American who is concerned about the safety of Israel.”

Chuck Hagel and the malignant neglect of Israel

Posted: 14 Dec 2012 10:27 AM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

Chuck Hagel is now thought to be the front-runner for Secretary of Defense. He would be an extremely poor choice. For one thing, he is overly averse to sending U.S. forces into harm’s way. Skepticism about doing so is healthy, of course. But Hagel’s overreaction to the Iraq war seems to have made him so reluctant to support the deployment of troops to battle that his job performance might well be affected. We need a Secretary of Defense made wise by experience, not scarred by it.

Moreover, Hagel is terrible on issues relating to Israel. As Eli Lake reports:

Hagel’s real opposition will likely come from the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) never takes formal positions on nominees, if the group is asked by senators for its view on Hagel, it’s unlikely AIPAC will have a kind word. A senior pro-Israel advocate in Washington told The Daily Beast on Thursday, “The pro-Israel community will view the nomination of Senator Chuck Hagel in an extremely negative light. His record is unique in its animus towards Israel.”

This is no overstatement. Consider that, as a Senator, Hagel voted against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, refused to call on the E.U. to designate Hezbollah a terrorist group, and consistently voted against sanctions on Iran for their illicit pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. Thus, as Josh Block, head of the Israel Project, says, “It is a matter of fact that [Hegal's] record on these issues puts him well outside the mainstream Democratic and Republican consensus.”

Hagel’s anti-Israel animus has been too much even for Democrats who defend Obama’s Israel record to stomach. Ira Forman, who was in charge of the Obama reelection campaign’s outreach to Jewish voters, said in 2009, after Hagel was named co-chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, that he would have opposed Hagel’s nomination for a more substantive position.

If Obama nominates Hagel for the quintessentially substantive job of Secretary of Defense, will that make Forman a useful idiot?

Lake also notes that, in addition to being a reliable “no” vote on sanctions against Iran, Hagel also serves on the board of directors of Deutsche Bank, which is reportedly being probed by U.S. authorities for possible violations of the very kinds of sanctions Hagel opposed when he was in Congress.

If Obama nominates Hagel, will that make Jews who worry about Iran but voted for Obama useful idiots?

Hagel isn’t just soft on Iran and Hezbollah; he’s also soft on Hamas. In 2009, he signed onto a letter from the U.S. Middle East Project that urged Obama to begin talks with Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist group, in an effort to revive the peace process.

It cannot plausibly be argued that Hagel’s pro-Hamas stance is based solely on a pragmatic recognition that Hamas has supplanted the PA as the “main game in town” when it comes to the “peace process.” Like his positions on Iran and Hezbollah, Hagel’s stance on Hamas stems from animus towards Israel. Indeed, the Atlantic Council, chaired by Hagel, has today published a column called “Israel’s Apartheid Policy.”

During the presidential campaign, Team Obama fended off accurate charges that the president has tilted away from Israel by arguing, accurately, that military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel has, if anything, been strengthened since Obama took office. But under a Hagel Defense Department, it is doubtful that such strong, seamless cooperation would continue. It is also doubtful that Israel could count on the active assistance of the U.S. in a military crisis.

Peter Beinart claims that Obama

Obama supports Al Quida linked group in Syria

Obama Supports Syrian Rebel Groups That Pledged Allegiance To Al-Qaeda

DECEMBER 13, 2012 BY BREAKING NEWS 8 COMMENTS

inShare1

The U.S. president, Barack Obama, recognized the new National Coalition Forces of the Revolution and the Syrian opposition (CNFROS) as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people. Obama affirmed his support for a coalition of rebels that have officially pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda-sponsored terrorist groups responsible for the killing of innocent civilians in their fight to bring down current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad

“We have decided that the Syrian opposition coalition is sufficiently inclusive and representative enough to reflect the Syrian population, who regard it as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people opposed to the Assad regime,” Obama said in excerpts from the interview given to ABC News and that will be broadcast in full on Friday.

Obama's ongoing support of terrorism

IPT News
November 29, 2012

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3827/obama-administration-oversells-morsi

Print

Send

Comment

RSS

Share:

  Be the first of your friends to like this.

The elected head of a nation made threatening statements toward Israel. His organization called for jihad and celebrated a bus bombing in Tel Aviv.

The United States then hailed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi as a statesman and a moderate last week.

True, he did help bring about a cessation of Hamas rocket fire from Gaza. But in doing so, he wasn't trying to advance American objectives or the cause of peace.

Morsi knew avoiding a war in Gaza would help secure $1 billion in debt relief from the United States and an International Monetary Fund loan approaching $5 billion.

All of that makes the high praise Morsi received from the Obama administration unnecessary and counterproductive. And the administration's tepid response to Morsi's subsequent power grab – neutering his country's judiciary – fails to make clear whether there will be consequences if he maintains dictatorial power.

"Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader's pragmatic confidence," The New York Times reported after the Gaza ceasefire Nov. 21. "He sensed an engineer's precision with surprisingly little ideology."

The president and his aides must not have been paying attention. Days earlier, Morsi stood in Cairo's al-Azhar mosque and offered unwavering support to Hamas and threatened Israel with violent retribution.

"Let everyone know that the size of Egypt and the capabilities of Egypt, and the people of Egypt have rage, and the leaders of Egypt are enraged at what is hitting Gaza," Morsi said. "The leaders of Egypt are enraged and are moving to prevent the aggression on the people of Palestine in Gaza."

"We in Egypt stand with Gaza," he said. "[W]e are with them in one trench, that he who hits them, hits us; that this blood which flows from their children, it, it is like the blood flowing from the bodies of our children and our sons, may this never happen."

During a Nov. 19 visit to Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Saad Katatni, chairman of Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party and speaker of Egypt's dissolved parliament, continued issuing violent threats of jihad against Israel, saying:

"We are with you in your jihad. We have come here to send a message from here to the Zionist entity, to the Zionist enemy. And we say to them, Egypt is no longer. Egypt is no longer after the revolution a strategic treasure for you. Egypt was and still is a strategic treasury for our brothers in Palestine; a strategic treasure for Gaza; a strategic treasure for all the oppressed."

The Obama administration has yet to criticize the pro-Hamas, pro-jihad rhetoric from Morsi, Katatni and their Brotherhood associates.

Throughout the conflict, the Muslim Brotherhood – where Morsi had been a senior member before seeking office earlier this year – issued a series of pro-Hamas statements and celebrations of attacks on Israel, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports.

During a protest organized by the Brotherhood and its political arm in Al-Qalyubi, preacher Muhammad Ragab called on Muslims "to raise the banner of jihad against the tyrannical, invading and wicked sons of apes and pigs [i.e., the Jews], and to unite against the enemies of Allah."

"The MB thanked Allah for the death of Israelis killed by rockets, and called for jihad against Israel," the MEMRI report says. "The official MB Facebook page reported joyously on the deaths of Israelis. On November 15, 2012, the official MB Facebook page celebrated the death of three Israeli civilians killed by a rocket that hit a house in Kiryat Malakhi: 'Allah akbar and praise to god, three Zionists were killed and five others were injured in a blast at a three-story building in Kiryat Malakhi from resistance rockets.'"

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland ducked the issue of violent rhetoric from Morsi and the Brotherhood when a reporter raised it in a Nov. 16 press briefing.

"Well, I'm obviously not, from this podium, going to characterize the Egyptian view, nor am I going to speak for them and characterize our private diplomatic conversations,"Nuland said. "We all agree on the need to de-escalate this conflict, and the question is for everybody to use their influence that they have to try to get there."

The Muslim Brotherhood's hostile rhetoric against Israel continued on Nov. 22 after the cease-fire was reached. Supreme Guide Dr. Mohamed Badie—considered by Middle East intelligence sources to be the real power broker behind Morsi— issued a statement describing jihad against the Jewish state as "a personal obligation for all Muslims."

"The cause of Palestine is of considerable importance. It is not a cause of power, nor of Palestinians, nor of the Arabs, but is the basic cause of life of every Muslim," Badie said."For the sake of its return, every Muslim must wage jihad, sacrifice; and expend his money for the sake of restoring it.

"Palestine and Jerusalem is a holy Muslim land, part of the faith of the Muslim ummah," Badie continued. "To forsake any part of it is to forsake the ummah's civilization and faith. This is a great sin."

The Muslim Brotherhood leader continued, saying that the Jews should not "establish a state for themselves" and should be content living as a minority in other nations.

"The enemy knows nothing but the language of force," Badie said. "Be aware of the game of grand deception with which they depict peace accords."

Morsi Grabs Dictatorial Powers

Cairo's streets filled with angry protesters after Morsi turned around and issued an edict making his decisions immune from judicial review just a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised him as a peacemaker.

"I want to thank President Morsi for his personal leadership to de-escalate the situation in Gaza and end the violence. This is a critical moment for the region," Clinton said during a Nov. 21 joint press conference in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr. "Egypt's new government is assuming the responsibility and leadership that has long made this country a cornerstone of regional stability and peace."

Morsi's grab for dictatorial power trampled Egypt's judiciary and gave him unchecked rule over Egypt at least until a new constitution is drafted.

At least 40 people were wounded and a teenager was killed Sunday in the Nile Delta city of Damanhoor when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried storming the Brotherhood's local offices, the Associated Press reported.

Washington's response has been tepid at best, calling for calm but never criticizing Morsi directly. White House Spokesman Jay Carney was asked directly Monday if the administration "condemned" Morsi's unprecedented power grab.

"We are concerned about it and have raised those concerns," Carney said.

During a press briefing also held Monday, the State Department's Nuland tread lightly. Clinton spoke with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr that morning, Nuland said, taking "that opportunity to reiterate some of the points that you saw in our statement, that we want to see the constitutional process move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands, that ensures that rule of law, checks and balances, protection of the rights of all groups in Egypt are upheld, et cetera."

She repeatedly referred back to a statement issued Friday calling for calm in Egypt as a result of Morsi's decree.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called on the United States to condemn these actions and demand they be reversed. "Stop. Stop. Renounce the statement, and the move that he just made. Allow the judiciary to function," McCain said. "If the judiciary is flawed in some way, then, that's an illness that can be cured over time. But, absolutely, to assume this kind of power is unacceptable to the United States of America and, then, we can outline what actions might be taken. But, first, condemn it."

Egypt's pro-democracy groups also have called on President Obama to condemn Morsi's decree, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

"I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity," said prominent opposition figure Mohamed Elbaradei.

The opposition forces have formed a National Salvation Front in response to Morsi's power grab in attempt to circumvent an impending Islamist takeover of the Egyptian government, referring to the move as a "coup" and Morsi as a "pharaoh."

"I'm against the constitution and the dictatorship of Mr. Morsi," anti-Morsi protester Horeya Naguib told the Associated Press Tuesday amid protests in Tahrir Square. "He is selling his own country and looks out for the interests of his group, not the people of Egypt."

Morsi's decree is his second attempt at consolidating power in five months, first ousting military leaders and invalidating a constitutional declaration that limited his control over Egypt's army.

Egyptian opposition politician Hamdeen Sabahy said that protests would continue until Morsi's decree was reversed, stating that Egypt "will not accept a new dictator because it brought down the old one."

Morsi's Long Support For Hamas

It is worth remembering that the administration has tried to cast the Muslim Brotherhood in a false light of moderation since the early days of the Arab Spring. In February 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared before a House committee and described the group as "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam."

That comment was widely derided and Clapper walked it back somewhat. But a series ofArabic translations from the Muslim Brotherhood's official website made by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows that Morsi worked for years alongside Hamas, which began as a splinter group from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s.

As a leading Muslim Brotherhood member of Egypt's parliament, Morsi wrote a Sept. 23, 2003 letter to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh thanking God for his survival and declaring his solidarity with Hamas' goal of destroying Israel.

"We thank all of you for your courageous positions in support of our cause, the cause of Palestine – the first Qibla of the Muslims, and your continued support of your brothers on the land of encampment," Morsi wrote, according to Ikhwanonline.com. "We send through you greetings to all our faithful brothers throughout the world, and we assure you that we are we are pledged to God, and we promise you we will continue to the path of jihad and resistance until victory or martyrdom."

In April 2004, Morsi actually led efforts in the Egyptian parliament to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

The Brotherhood's own website reported that "Dr. Morsi" proposed "a timetable for the disposal of the alleged peace agreement signed with the Zionist entity."

Later that year, Morsi invoked anti-Semitic themes found in the Qur'an and Shariah law, saying the Jews are "the most hostile of men to Muslims" and that "Zionists are traitors to every covenant."

In 2007, he said that he and the Muslim Brotherhood actively supported Palestinian jihadism to annihilate Israel through violent jihad: "[T]he Palestinian issue for the Brotherhood is pivotal and essential, and that the Brotherhood offered and still offers full support for the Palestinian resistance to liberate the Holy Land."

A month later, Morsi participated in a teleconference with Haniyeh, saying "resistance is the right and only way to liberate the land from the defilement of the Jews."

The list goes on and on. Morsi delivered a brief respite in the rocket fire from Gaza toward Israeli civilians. That's a good thing. But pretending this one act somehow transforms him into a statesman, or a reliable international mediator is not. It's reckless.