At the conclusion of Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, noted Middle-East scholar Professor Paul Eidelberg, president of a Jerusalem-based think tank and the author of “Jewish Statesmanship: Lest Israel Fall”, is warning fellow American voters of dire consequences for the state of Israel if the Barack Obama is elected President of the United States.

Eidelberg, founder and president of The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy (www.Foundation1.org) and a columnist for the Jewish Press noted:

Today, I am issuing the sternest warning possible to my fellow Jews as well as all Americans who love their country and their brothers and sisters in Israel. Never in my lifetime has there been a Presidential candidate so utterly clueless about the importance of the State of Israel and the need for the U.S. to stand with her.

"Barack Obama has only the most superficial knowledge about Israel and the Middle East, and the advisers he has hired, so-called experts, appear to have learned nothing from the history of this war-infected region. His trip to Israel is nothing more than a campaign ploy to make him appear to have expertise on an issue of which he is pathetically ignorant."

Noting that Obama supports Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, which Eidelberg refers to as “Judea & Samaria,” he states “This will cause the West Bank to become a base for international terrorism and a launching pad for bombing Israeli towns such as Sderot, has caused the town to be depopulated. A withdrawal will trigger a flow of arms into these areas that will result in every city and military base in Israel to be within range of even the most rudimentary Arab missiles. When that happens I don’t believe Barack Obama will defend Israel."

Eidelberg, a graduate of the University of Chicago, served as an officer in the United States Air Force and immigrated to Israel in 1976 shortly after authoring a trilogy on America’s Founding Fathers, The Philosophy of The American, On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence, and A Discourse on Statesmanship. He is also the author of various books on the Arab-Israel conflict and has a weekly talk show on Israel National Radio.

“That Senator Obama should be a serious candidate for President of the United States is shocking to a person like me, who has written extensively on America’s Founding Fathers. I see Obama as a danger not only to Israel but to America as well. I therefore urge all Americans: do not be deceived by this cunning, smooth-talking and inexperienced politician whose agenda will endanger the two nations I love: Israel and America.”

Dear Senator Obama, (by Yossi Klein Halevi)

Welcome to Israel. When you arrive here on July 22, you will encounter a people intrigued by your candidacy and, given the current crisis of Israeli leadership, envious of your capacity to inspire. Issues that have worried some Americans about your background have scarcely been noted here. The whispering campaign labeling you a Muslim wasn't taken seriously by mainstream Israelis. Nor are we fazed by your middle name: Half of Israel's Jewish population has origins in Muslim cultures. Despite black-Jewish tensions in America, your color evokes little concern here; Israel rescued tens of thousands of African Jews and turned their arrival into a national celebration. Even Rev. Wright didn't cause much of a stir, maybe because we're used to being embarrassed by our own religious leaders.

Still, as much as Israelis want to embrace you, there is anxiety here about your candidacy. Not that we doubt your friendship: Your description of Israeli security as "sacrosanct," and your passionate endorsement of Israel's cause at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, were greeted with banner headlines in the Israeli press. Instead, Israelis worry that, as president, you might act too hastily in trying to solve the Palestinian problem, and not hastily enough in trying to solve the Iranian problem.

On the surface, the Israel you will encounter is thriving. The beaches and cafes are crowded, the shekel is one of the world’s strongest currencies, our high-tech companies are dominating NASDAQ, our wineries are winning international medals, and we even export goat cheese to France.

But beneath the exuberance lies is a desperate nation. The curse of Jewish history--the inability to take mere existence for granted--has returned to a country whose founding was intended to resolve that uncertainty. Even the most optimistic Israelis sense a dread we have felt only rarely--like in the weeks before the Six Day War, when Egyptian President Gammal Abdul Nasser shut down the Straits of Tiran, moved his army toward our border, and promised the imminent destruction of Israel. At the time, Lyndon Johnson, one of the best friends Israel ever had in the White House, was too preoccupied with an unpopular war to offer real assistance.

We feel our security unraveling. Terror enclaves have emerged on two of our borders, undoing a decades-long Israeli policy to deny terrorist bases easy reach to our population centers. The cease-fire with Hamas is widely seen here as a defeat--an admission that Israel couldn't defend its communities on the Gaza border from eight years of shelling, and an opportunity for Hamas to consolidate its rule and smuggle in upgraded missiles for the inevitable next round of fighting. The unthinkable has already happened: missiles on Haifa and Ashkelon, exploding buses in Jerusalem, hundreds of thousands of Israelis transformed into temporary refugees. During the first Gulf War in 1991, when Tel Aviv was hit with Scud missiles, residents fled to the Galilee. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when the Galilee was hit with Katyushas, residents fled to Tel Aviv. In the next war, there will be nowhere to flee: The entire country is now within missile range of Iran and its terrorist proxies.

Above all else, we dread a nuclear Iran. With few exceptions, the consensus within the political and security establishment is that Israel cannot live with an Iranian bomb. In the U.S., a debate has begun over whether the Iranian regime is rational or apocalyptic. In truth no one knows whether the regime, or elements within it, would be mad enough to risk nuclear war. But precisely because no one knows, Israel will not place itself in a position to find out. As we contemplate the possibility of an Israeli military strike, we worry about the extent of support from you at what could be the most critical moment in our history. When Israelis discuss the timing of a possible attack, they often ask: If Obama wins the election, should we hit Iran before January?

True, you told AIPAC that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." But that was the one moment in your speech that failed to convince. Last December you appeared to endorse the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which broadly hinted that Iran may not be seeking a nuclear bomb after all--a claim that may have soothed Americans worried about Dick Cheney launching another preemptive war, but appalled not only Israeli intelligence but also French and British intelligence (and that has since been at least partially retracted). In the Iowa debate, you responded to a question about the NIE by stating that "it's absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology...They should stop the saber-rattling, should have never started it, and they need now to aggressively move on the diplomatic front."

From where Israelis sit, it's clear that Iran temporarily suspended its weaponizations program--which is, in fact, the least important part of its effort to attain nuclear power--for the same reason that Muamar Qadaffi abandoned his nuclear program: fear of America after the Iraq invasion. A senior European Union official told me last year how grateful he was to America and Israel for raising the military threat against Iran. "You make our job easier," he said, referring to European-Iranian negotiations.

I am convinced that you regard a nuclear Iran as an intolerable threat, as you put it to AIPAC, and that, under your administration, negotiations with Iran would be coupled with a vigorous campaign of sanctions. And you've made the convincing argument that you could summon international goodwill far better than the current administration. No nation would be more relieved by an effective sanctions campaign than Israel. We know what the consequences are likely to be of an attack on Iran--retaliatory missiles on Tel Aviv, terrorism against Jewish communities abroad, rising anti-Semitism blaming the Jews for an increase in oil prices.

We worry, though, that the sanctions will be inadequate and that the Iranians will exploit American dialogue as cover to complete their nuclearization. Unless stopped, Iran's nuclear program will reach the point of no return within the early phases of the next administration. We need to hear that under no circumstances would an Obama administration allow the Iranian regime to go nuclear--that if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the U.S. will either attack or else support us if we do.

The rise of Hamas has only confirmed what Israelis have sensed since the violent collapse of the peace process in September 2000: that the Palestinian national movement is dysfunctional. The bitter joke here is that we're well within reach of a two-state solution--a Hamas state in Gaza and a Fatah state in the West Bank.

In your speech to AIPAC, you intuited an understanding of the Israeli psyche--hopes for peace, along with wariness. But our wariness isn’t only a response to terrorism. More profoundly, we fear being deceived again by wishful thinking, by our desperation for peace, as we allowed ourselves to be during the years of the Oslo process. At that time, many Israelis began a painful, necessary process of self- reckoning, asking ourselves the crucial question of how Palestinians experienced this conflict, in effect borrowing Palestinian eyes. Many of us forced ourselves to confront the tragedy of a shattered people, one part dispersed, another part occupied, yet another uneasy citizens in a Jewish state. Most of all, we allowed ourselves the vulnerability of hope. We lowered our guard and empowered Yasser Arafat, convincing ourselves that he had become a partner for peace. The subsequent betrayal wasn’t Arafat's alone: Even now Fatah continues to convey to Palestinians the message that Israel is illegitimate and destined to disappear. Many Israelis have become so wary of being taken for fools again--which this generation of Jews had vowed would never happen to us--that talk of hope seems like unbearable naïveté.

Most Israelis want a solution to the Palestinian problem as keenly as does the international community, and understand, no less than our critics abroad, that the occupation is a long-term disaster for Israel. The Israeli irony is that we have shifted from dreading the creation of a Palestinian state to dreading its failure. Fulfilling the classical Zionist hopes for a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority, at home in the Middle East and an equal member of the international community, ultimately depend on resolving the Palestinian tragedy. The Jewish return home will not be complete until we find our place in the Middle East.

But empowering the Palestinians requires renewing the trust of the Israeli public toward them. And that, in turn, requires some sign from Palestinian leaders that Israel's legitimacy is at least being debated within Palestinian society rather than systematically denigrated. Repeating a commitment to "peace" is meaningless: Peace, after all, can include a Middle East without a Jewish state.

For many years, Israelis denied the right of the Palestinians to define themselves as a nation, considering Palestinian nationalism an invention by the Arab world to undermine Israel. We experienced our conceptual breakthrough in the 1990s. Now it's the Palestinians’ turn. Admittedly, Israelis, as the powerful protagonists, could more readily develop a nuanced understanding of the conflict. Psychologically, though, we too are the underdog: Israel may be Goliath to the Palestinian David, but we are David to the Arab worlds (and Iran's) Goliath. We cannot empower the Palestinians while fearing our consequent diminishment.

You can be a crucial voice in encouraging the transformation of Palestinian consciousness. Perhaps parts of Palestinian society and of the broader Arab world would be able to hear from you what it cannot hear from us: that the Jews aren't colonialist invaders or crusaders but an indigenous people living in its land. Perhaps you can help the Middle East reconcile itself to our existence, and in so doing, help us complete our return home.

As you go through the requisite visits to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the President's House, the Israeli public will be hoping to hear, beyond affirmations of your commitment to Israeli security, that America under President Obama will understand what maintaining that security involves. We hope that you will insist on a peace based on acceptance of the permanent legitimacy of a Jewish state, and on a Middle East free of the apocalyptic terror of a nuclear Iran. We, too, need the hope that you have promised America.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor of The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

This article come from the June 23rd edition of FrontPageMag.com:

Forty-eight-year-old Rima Barakat-Sinclair has been a resident of Denver since 1987. Never having held political office before, she is currently running as a Republican for a State House seat in Colorado’s Sixth District, which is heavily Democratic and features the largest per capita Jewish population in the state. With the self-identified aim of working “for better understanding among peoples of different backgrounds,” Barakat-Sinclair has participated in numerous “interfaith dialogues” to promote “more tolerance” and thereby create “a stronger united America.” She pledges undying allegiance to such ideals as “upholding the Constitution,” defending “individual freedom,” promoting “small government,” enacting “prudent tax and spending policies,” “investing in our children,” guaranteeing “freedom of religion,” and recognizing “the sanctity of human life.” Oh, and by the way, she is a Muslim activist who considers Israel to be a nation of bloodthirsty monsters who indiscriminately murder innocent Palestinian women and children for no reason other than to satisfy their own beastly compulsions.

While working as a contract translator for CNN in 2003, Mrs. Barakat-Sinclair was part of an interfaith delegation of Christians and Muslims who paid a friendly visit to Yasser Arafat at his Ramallah headquarters, where, since December 2001, Israeli troops had been keeping him under virtual house arrest in an effort to derail his terrorist activities. Favorably impressed by the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolph Hitler, Barakat-Sinclair would later reflect: “I know the accusations about him [Arafat] supporting terror, but he was so confined and surrounded that to me it seemed more like visiting a tourist attraction than visiting a head of state. It was very, very weird.” Arafat’s main message to his visitors, she expanded, was that he felt “robbed of his legacy” because “the peace process had not gone forward.” Added the star-struck woman, “He [Arafat] flirted [with me] a bit, in a very nice way, you know, saying, ‘I like your hair, your long braids.’”

Barakat-Sinclair was a key participant in an October 2005 conference sponsored by Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based organization that supports a “one-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Israel would continue to exist, but not as a Jewish state. Barakat-Sinclair led a workshop on the topic of the so-called “Right of Return” of those Palestinian refugees who (for the most part) voluntarily had left the region during the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel. At that time, the refugees sought out safe haven during what they anticipated would be a brief war that the Arab allies undoubtedly would win, and they fully expected to return to their homes within a few weeks -- once the fighting had stopped and the Jews had been crushed. Instead, the Arab armies were defeated. Barakat-Sinclair now calls for the re-admittance not only of the relatively few surviving people who were among those 725,000 original refugees, but also for the admittance of several millions of their descendants, a move that would transform Israel overnight into an Arab-majority state dominated by Muslims sympathetic with the aims of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In a July 2006 interview with CBS television, Barakat-Sinclair stood truth on its head when she condemned Israel’s “imprisonment of five million Palestinians” who, for their part, were “trying to resolve this conflict peacefully.” Israel had responded to those peace efforts, she said, by engaging in “more and more land-grabbing,” by erecting a wall “literally imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people,” and by incarcerating more than “ten thousand prisoners,” including women and children, “for no reason.” “Israeli soldiers now are known to be just bombing and killing babies,” she added for good measure. (Click here for video of this interview.)

Four months later, Barakat-Sinclair charged that a “depraved” Israel routinely carried out “massacres” by means of “the regular use of disproportionate firepower against a trapped population in Gaza” -- thereby demonstrating “the level of contempt with which the Israel government views Palestinian lives.” She told tales of sadistic Israeli soldiers beating handicapped people, gunning down women and babies, opening fire on crowds of beachgoers, breaking into homes at night and murdering entire families in their beds, and riddling children with bullets while the youngsters were merely harvesting strawberries. Likening Israel’s “mass slaughter” of Palestinians to the horrors that existed under “slavery, [South African] apartheid and Nazi concentration camps,” Barakat-Sinclair said that Israel “has turned back the clock to the time of the barbarians” by engaging in “the systematic indiscriminate murder of civilians and the illegal collective imprisonment of a whole nation.”

“As Americans we must understand that the world sees the United States as a collaborator in this endless carnage,” says Barakat-Sinclair. “The F-16s that drop Israeli death decrees upon the Palestinians were ‘Made in the USA.’ We finance and enable the perpetrators to commit these crimes with impunity and in violation of our own laws.”

Just as Barakat-Sinclair places no limits on the lies she is willing to tell about Israel, so is she prepared to go to any lengths to avoid criticizing Islamic terrorists. Indeed she has claimed, on the air, that the Hamas Charter does not in any way call for Israel’s destruction. Yet that document decrees quite plainly, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” The Charter further contains numerous calls for violent jihad to counter “the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine.”

Barakat-Sinclair also has defended Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi against his critics, calling him “a renowned Muslim scholar.” A disciple of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Islam expert Robert Spencer describes as “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda,” Qaradawi is a supporter of Palestinian terrorism who has been barred from entering the United States since 1999.

Barakat-Sinclair is a member of the Steering Committee of Muslims Intent on Learning and Action (MILA), an organization that seeks to increase Muslims’ involvement in the American political process. Her own current candidacy is a reflection of that mission.

To pass herself off as a conservative Republican, Barakat-Sinclair has had to resort to considerable deception. For instance, she falsely represented herself at the District Assembly as a pro-life opponent of abortion. Her duplicity on this issue eventually would come to light, however, when a researcher tracked down a quote where Barakat-Sinclair had told the Rocky Mountain News on August 14, 2004: “I would like to have a president who is pro-choice.”

Barakat-Sinclair’s opponent in the upcoming Republican primary (slated for August 12th) will be Joshua Sharf, a contract web developer whose professional career also has included work as a talk radio host, a financial analyst, and a defense and intelligence consultant for such projects as satellite systems and missile defense. In 2004 and 2005 Sharf served as an election judge, and in 2006 he was a delegate to the Colorado Republican state assembly. A blogger at his own View From a Height website and at Brent Bozell’s Newsbusters, Sharf is running as a traditional conservative Republican, and not, despite the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of the district, as an identity candidate.
Sharf has accurately characterized Barakat-Sinclair as “a terror apologist, and an avowed enemy of Israel, with no credible conservative credentials.” “When engaged in anti-Israel propaganda,” Sharf observes, she usually goes by [the name] Rima Barakat. When engaged in broader political work, she goes by Rima Sinclair …”

Taking a page directly out of the leftist playbook, Barakat-Sinclair has cast herself as a victim, dismissing Sharf’s criticisms of her affinity for Islamic extremism as evidence of her opponent’s Islamophobic bigotry. Complaining that “these attacks on me have intense emotions of hate and militancy behind them,” she laments that her detractors “hate my religion, my very being.”

In an effort to gain favorable press coverage for her political campaign, Barakat-Sinclair has turned to the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, a project of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). CNI’s stated mission is “to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel.” Specifically, the organization calls for: “total withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territory”; “an end to all acts of aggression, provocation, and retaliation by Israel”; “American recognition of a totally independent state of Palestine”; and “an elimination of all unaudited U.S. aid to Israel.” In short, CNI is no friend of Israel.

Barakat-Sinclair’s case is vitally important because it offers a vivid illustration of how a Muslim radical can effectively wage bloodless jihadagainst the West by infiltrating the government and thereby gaining a platform from which to infect the entire body politic. Her strategy is wholly consistent with the plans that were laid out in a secret 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on “the General Strategic Goal … in North America.” Explaining that the Brotherhood’s mission was to establish “an effective and ... stable Islamic Movement” on the continent, this document outlines a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for achieving that objective. It states that Muslims “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.’”

Rima Barakat-Sinclair is the living embodiment of that strategy.