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Author: David Gerstman

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David Gerstman

David Gerstman blogged as Soccer Dad from 2003 to 2010. Formerly a computer programmer, he is now a blogger for The Israel Project's The Tower blog.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 21, 2016 10 Comments
Vox.com, which purports to "explain" things, has turned its attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The results are not pretty. Truth takes a backseat to revisionism and a combination of ignorance and propaganda forces out knowledge. Here's the video, but be sure to read the explanation below as to how it misleads: In general the content can be divided in two: anything that makes Israel look bad or the Palestinians sympathetic is described in (often incorrect) detail; anything that makes the Palestinians (or Arabs generally) look bad is described only generally. Israel is active; Palestinians are passive.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 14, 2016 14 Comments
With the news that Iran has seized two American boats and detained 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf just ahead of the State of the Union earlier this week, I'd like to go back to something that President Barack Obama said a little more than a year ago. Even though the sailors have been released, albeit under humiliating circumstances, the real story here, which the media is generally ignoring, is that they were taken prisoner in the first place. At the end of 2014, Obama gave an interview to Steve Inskeep of NPR. When explaining his rationale for the nuclear deal this is what Obama said:
So, when I came into office, the world was divided and Iran was in the driver's seat. Now the world's united because of the actions we've taken, and Iran's the one that's isolated.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 07, 2016 23 Comments
At a time when tensions in the Middle East are rising, it is perhaps a time to once again review President Barack Obama's qualifications for office. To be sure his qualifications were fabricated, or at least oversold. This wasn't just the doing of the Obama campaign. Campaigns are supposed to do present their candidates in the best possible light. The problem  was that America's supposedly independent media boosted the first terms senator's prospects with little or no skepticism. This was certainly the case in reporting where most reporters bought into the historical aspect of Obama's candidacy as well was the rebuke to Republicans for the failings of the Bush presidency. (If not the failings, then the aspects that the liberal media disagreed with.) For the purpose of this exercise let's look at parts of The Washington Post's 2008 endorsement of Obama. I am using the Post as an example of what we saw so frequetly because even though the Post is a liberal paper, its editorial position regarding foreign policy is generally responsible. However in the Post's enthusiasm for Obama, all caution was disregarded and they promoted a man who did not really exist.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 04, 2016 8 Comments
Two ongoing news stories that broke this past week show the Obama administration's contrasting styles towards America's top Middle East ally and a rogue nation that continues to flout international law. Obama and his top officials have no problem playing hardball with Israel, but become like Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story, who doesn't like confrontations, when dealing with  Iran. First, last Tuesday The Wall Street Journal (Google link) reported that the administration excluded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the list of foreign leaders it would not spy on after Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA regularly spied on friendly heads of state. Quoting current and former U.S. officials the spying on Netanyahu was deemed by Obama to be a “compelling national security purpose.” Of course the reason for this was Netanyahu's objections to the Iran nuclear deal. The fear was that Netanyahu would leak sensitive information he had been told by the United States in order to torpedo the deal. (Israel insisted that the secret details that it learned came from spying on Iran.)

Posted by David Gerstman on December 26, 2015 3 Comments
Anti-Israel bias in The New York Times isn't news. But an article this week once again highlights how the Times promotes those who criticize or demonize Israel pretty uncritically, Israeli Veterans’ Criticism of West Bank Occupation Incites Furor. The report in question was about the group Breaking the Silence, which the paper described as "a leftist organization of combat veterans that says it aims to expose the grim reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank." Of course that's not all, it also has brought up of accusations, often unsubstantiated, of IDF misconduct during war too. Still the story of Breaking the Silence is portrayed as a referendum on Israel and its morality. We read of the organization as being "at the center of a furor that is laying bare Israel’s divisions over its core values and the nature of its democracy," and "[highlighting] what it views as the corrosive nature of the occupation of the West Bank on Israeli society."

Posted by David Gerstman on December 20, 2015 15 Comments
Iran and its allies have taken a beating in Syria according to recent reports. Perhaps the most spectacular was the airstrike overnight that killed the notorious child killer, Samir Kuntar and eight other terrorists in a Damascus suburb. Prof. Jacobson rightly called Kuntar "among the most notorious and vicious terrorists," for shooting Danny Haran to death in front of his four year old daughter, Einat, and then killed her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Needless to say Kuntar was treated as a hero by Hezbollah, who traded the bodies of IDF soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, to free Kuntar in 2008. He also received the Syrian Order of Merit from Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad shortly after his release. But Kuntar's killing is just a symptom of the recently reported problems plaguing Iran and its allies who are backing Assad.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 11, 2015 22 Comments
If you ask me what the most important article in The New York Times of the past week, it would not be the front page editorial advocating stricter gun control. That editorial was important in terms of the mindset of the Times, but had little real new value. The most significant new article in The New York Times during this past week was Friday's analysis of the nuclear deal with Iran. The article is a devastating indictment of the administration and its zeal to reach a nuclear deal with Iran at all costs. To be sure the reporter, David Sanger, an excellent journalist, presented the administration's positions respectfully. But there's no getting around that however President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry justify their capitulations, they are willing to lift sanctions on Iran without requiring Iran to come clean about its past illicit nuclear research. In the wake of last week's IAEA report about Iran's past nuclear research, the administration is reportedly satisfied that Iran has provided the IAEA with enough information to close the investigation into Iran's past nuclear work and move ahead to the implementation of this summer's nuclear deal. The administration's rationale is that "preventing a nuclear-armed Iran in the future is far more important than trying to force it to admit" its past illicit nuclear research.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 08, 2015 12 Comments
In the early days of blogging there was a blog called Oh, that liberal media, which regularly exposed instances of liberal media bias. In fact in the early days of blogging that was one of the top achievements of the blogosphere, to point out the easy political bias most supposedly objective news sources engaged in. I used to think that the blogosphere would serve as a necessary corrective to the media, but that hasn't happened. In recent years, I don't think that the criticism has had the same effect, even if in some ways the media cocoon has worsened. I think that conservative media critics have convinced all those who can be convinced of the bias and now either people accept the bias because they agree with it or look to alternative news sources because they don't trust the MSM. And the MSM started paying less attention to the criticism. Most of those who were persuadable have been persuaded. (As far as those who deny that such bias exist ... it's hard to deny when prominent journalists have boasted of the bias.) But I still believe that it's possible for the media to jump the shark. At some point the media will show that they are so hopelessly out of touch with most voters, that even non-ideological types would cease to believe them.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 02, 2015 6 Comments
Armin Rosen of Business Insider had a bombshell report on Monday about the Obama administration's diplomatic malpractice with Iran in the context of the nuclear deal announced earlier this summer. Citing a recently obtained State Department document, Rosen reported that the administration has no intention of ensuring that Iran provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with all the details of its past nuclear research. Though "extensive evidence" exists that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until at least 2003, the United States has so watered down Iran's requirements for answering questions about its past nuclear work, that the IAEA  will not have a complete picture of the extent of Iran's military nuclear program. As IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano made clear earlier this week, Iran is still stonewalling. The problem is that the United States is okay with that. Rosen reported:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 30, 2015 13 Comments
Last week saw a very important piece of news about the nuclear deal with Iran. And it was covered by neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano said that Iran, instead of coming clean about its past nuclear work, has continued to stonewall. Amano, too much the bureaucrat to use those actual words, said that his agency's report will not be "black and white." But Iran was obligated to come clean by the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) from two years ago "to facilitate resolution of past and present issues of concern." That obligation to come clean also was required by this summer's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to "fully implement the 'Roadmap for Clarification of Past and Present Outstanding Issues' agreed with the IAEA, containing arrangements to address past and present issues of concern relating to its nuclear programme." Since Amano did not say that Iran "fully" addressed questions about its past nuclear work, he's acknowledging that Iran did not comply with its obligations.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 27, 2015 4 Comments
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R - Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R - Ark.) have a lot in common. Both are army veterans and both are graduates of Harvard Law School. And both have been doing a great job of exposing aspects of the nuclear deal with Iran that the administration would rather keep quiet. This week it was reported that an inquiry from Pompeo got the State Department to admit that the nuclear deal was never signed and is not "legally binding." Julia Frifield, the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, wrote in response to Pompeo's inquiry if he could see the signed agreement, in a letter reproduced at the congressman's website, that the nuclear deal was not binding and that it was not signed by any party. The key parts of the letter read:
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document ...

Posted by David Gerstman on November 12, 2015 17 Comments
In a look at the history of the tensions between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The New York Times several days ago started with an interesting anecdote.
For President Obama, it was a day of celebration. He had just signed the most important domestic measure of his presidency, his health care program. So when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived at the White House for a hastily arranged visit, it was likely not the main thing on his mind. To White House officials, it was a show of respect to make time for Mr. Netanyahu on that day back in March 2010. But Mr. Netanyahu did not see it that way. He felt squeezed in, not accorded the rituals of such a visit. No photographers were invited to record the moment. "That wasn't a good way to treat me," he complained to an American afterward. The tortured relationship between Barack and Bibi, as they call each other, has been a story of crossed signals, misunderstandings, slights perceived and real. Burdened by mistrust, divided by ideology, the leaders of the United States and Israel talked past each other for years until the rupture over Mr. Obama's push for a nuclear agreement with Iran led to the spectacle of Mr. Netanyahu denouncing the president's efforts before a joint meeting of Congress.
It's interesting because this is not at all how I remembered it. I remember that the lack of attention to the meeting was perceived as an intentional slight of Netanyahu. A quick check of the contemporaneous reporting confirmed this.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 04, 2015 10 Comments
Former President Bill Clinton's said last week in Israel in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, that peace is up to Israel. As the Associated Press reported:
"He refused to give up his dream of peace in the face of violence," Clinton, who formed a close bond with Rabin when both were in office, said to roars of applause. "The next step will be determined by whether you decide that Yitzhak Rabin was right, that you have to share the future with your neighbors ... that the risks for peace are not as severe as the risk of walking away from it. Those of us who loved him and love your country are praying that you will make the right decision."
Even last year, Clinton indicated that he didn't believe that Netanyahu could make peace. But this is false history, as Jonathan Tobin at Commentary pointed out, "if there is anything that the last 22 years have taught us it is that it clearly not up to the Israeli people."

Posted by David Gerstman on September 07, 2015 17 Comments
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power recently wrote a piece for Politico arguing the Congress not reject the nuclear deal with Iran. In short she argued that rejecting the deal would leave the United States, not Iran isolated and the ability of the United States would be greatly compromised in its ability to influence outcomes globally. Towards the end she summed up her argument:
The Iran nuclear deal has been championed by the president of the United States, every one of America’s European friends and countless other countries around the world. If Congress rejects the deal, we will project globally an America that is internally divided, unreliable and dismissive of the views of those with whom we built Iran’s sanctions architecture in the first place. Although it is hard to measure the precise impact of these perceptions, I and other American diplomats around the world draw every day on our nation’s soft power, which greatly enhances our ability to mobilize other countries to our side. While that soft power is built in many ways, two of its most important sources are the belief among other countries’ leaders and publics that we share similar values, and that America delivers on its commitments. Of course, there is no substitute for the essential deterrent and coercive effects rooted in the hard power of America’s unmatched military arsenal. But we should not underestimate the political capital we will lose—political capital that we draw upon for influence—if we walk away from this deal.
What makes Power's plea so inexplicable is her record. As Claudia Rosett explained back in July:

Posted by David Gerstman on September 04, 2015 11 Comments
Sen. Ben Cardin (D - Md.) today announced his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran (AKA Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) in an op-ed published in The Washington Post. With Sen. Chuck Schumer (D - N.Y.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D - N.J.) Cardin becomes the third Democrat to break ranks with President Barack Obama and oppose the deal. But Democrats already have enough votes to override a veto. Cardin's main points of disagreement with the deal is that it would legitimize Iran's nuclear program and boost its economy making the imposition of sanctions difficult if not impossible.
The JCPOA would provide this legal path to a country that remains a rogue state and has violated its international nonproliferation obligations for years. It would provide Iran with international endorsement of an industrial-scale nuclear program. Worse, Iran would be economically strengthened by frighteningly quick relief from sanctions and international economic engagement. If Iran violates the agreement, building international support for new sanctions would take too long to be effective. A military response in this scenario would be more likely, although disastrous.

Posted by David Gerstman on August 30, 2015 6 Comments
In a press conference yesterday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that he didn't want the Iranian legislature to approve the nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) the Associated Press reported Saturday.
Rouhani told a news conference that the deal was a political understanding reached with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, not a pact requiring parliamentary approval. The deal also says Iran would implement the terms voluntarily, he said. ... "If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is sent to (and passed by) parliament, it will create an obligation for the government . it will mean the president, who has not signed it so far, will have to sign it," Rouhani said. "Why should we place an unnecessary legal restriction on the Iranian people?" ... The president said a parliamentary vote would benefit the U.S. and its allies, not Iran.
Similarly, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported, "President Rouhani underlined that the submission of the JCPOA to the Parliament would mean that the president would have to sign the JCPOA, an extra legal commitment that the administration has already avoided." So Iran doesn't want to be bound legally by the JCPOA.
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