Is Samantha Power, Selected to be Ambassador to UN, A Fair Person?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

                         UN, General Assembly, New York, New York, USA
President Obama has announced that he will nominate foreign policy confidant Samantha Power, a pro Palestinian  and anti-Israeli human rights speaker,  to replace Susan Rice as the US ambassador to the UN.  This is pretty earthshaking news as she inferred  in 2002 about the need to invade Israel!  She has been connected to Obama for a long time.  In 2008 she was forced to resign from his campaign because of her negative remarks she made about Hillary Clinton. She is to take office in July, 2013.

I have the website for her 3 minute long 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler of Berkeley University asking her questions as first on my list below, but here is a rundown of what she said and felt.  She was asked that if she were the advisor to Obama, what would you say to him. Her answer was shocking being that Israel is the one and only democratic state in the Middle East and has been called a friend of the USA by other presidents since Harry Truman.

She advised to invest in the new state of Palestine in the amount of billions of dollars that it would take to have a mammoth protection force that was meaningful.  She seems to be worrying about their genocide from Israel, not the other way around.  She thought that both political leaders (Arafat and Sharon)  had been dreadfully irresponsible and the situation requires external intervention.   She wanted to put something on the line which might mean alienating a domestic constituency (Israel) of tremendous political and financial import (support to Israel).  It's plain to see who she is already bent to support.

Though today she disavows the clip, she obviously was referring to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby.  Her planning the backing of a "meaningful military presence" sounds like an invasion for sure.  When she was again interviewed, this time by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper in 2008, she disowned her own comments that are on the video, copping out with saying that she didn't understand them and they sounded weird" even to her today.  Of course, there's going to be lots of backlash to this appointment because of that interview.  She's now bemoaning that the statement was made "some time ago" and now regrets them.  She then came up with, "Judaism teaches that a person is judged primarily by their actions."  She doesn't know about loshen hora, then.  Words hurt as much as bombs do many times over.

Samantha 43 years old, is an Irish American  writer that started her career as a journalist covering the Yugoslav Wars. From 1998 to 2002 she worked on Human Rights at Harvard where she she worked as a professor.  She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008 when she had to resign.  She is an immigrant from Dublin, Ireland and came with her parents at age 9 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1979.  She went to high school in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Yale University.  From  1993 to 1996, she had a job as a journalist and then returned to the USA and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1999.

Her specialty in writing is human rights and genocide.  During her 2005-6 work for Senator Obama, she got him interested in the Darfur conflict.  Very young and having worked in a real job for only 6 years, I don't see anything on her resume saying she's an expert in the Palestinian Israeli conflict.  She seems to me to have already made a judgement against Israel if she felt they needed to be invaded and all monies must be spent on creating Palestine.  She's very one-sided in her decision-making without facts to back up her feelings.

Obama presents her as a woman who has been a relentless advocate for American interests and values.  So Israel doesn't count anymore with this administration as being one of America's interests or values?  Why is it that Obama never selects people who are pro-Israel?  Samantha is copping a plea and so are the reporters writing about her 2002 Freudian slip, if that is what it was.

Heavens, if she is still thinking like she did at age 32, she's be ready to invade Israel but not Syria, whose government has already killed off 80,000 or more in which the USA certainly has not invaded to set things right.  She doesn't get it in that it is the Palestinian Hamas terrorists who are terrorizing and trying to kill the southern Israelis with mortars, missiles and rockets.  We are wondering where the Human Rights people are  and never meet any except when Israel is forced to recapitulate to stop the attack and who  are noted by other army heads as doing it in a very humane way, more than others would.  It would help if she studied the situation, and not only from Palestinian propaganda.

May I suggest my favorite author, Joan Peters, reporter, non-Jewish, who also thought the Palestinians were being treated unfairly.  After she did a real job of researching such as a reporter should do, she wrote her book, From Time Immemorial and wound up advising presidents.  Now that was a reporter who deserves a prize!  She was not swayed by biased people, even though she went into the research with strong opinions.  She came to see the facts and printed them.  They reshaped her viewpoint.  Samantha!  Read her book!

Resource:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFdt6fjdHQw&feature=youtu.be
 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/israeli-newspaper-focuses-on-samantha-powers-remarks-in-2002/
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/short-decade-old-youtube-clip-likely-to-dog-power-confirmation-as-u-s-ambassador-to-un.premium-1.528003?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.219%2C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Power
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/05/who-exactly-is-samantha-power-obamas-new-u-n-ambassador-pick-everything-you-need-to-know/#
6/7/13: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/an-israel-hater-heads-to-the-u-n/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6e48846891-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-6e48846891-156514682

Gilad Shalit Made It Home:

Nadene Goldfoot
Gilad Shalit is finally home after more than 5 years of being held captive after being kidnapped by Hamas.  He showed up thinner and very pale.  His voice was faint and he seemed to have difficulty concentrating.  He shows signs of malnutrition and a lack of exposure to sunlight which would mean having a vitamin D deficiency. 

Before he got home Egypt interviewed him on their TV station which was not part of the bargain.  He was brought by a Hamas gunman belonging to the Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas who was wearing a black face mask and green headband.  I suppose he didn't want to be identified by Israel.   He was carrying his video camera.

The TV interviewer asked a stupid question in that she asked why he only gave one interview while held a captive.  She then ignored the fact that Hamas had barred everyone from visiting him including the Red Cross while he was held.  Unlike Palestinian prisoners, he has been in isolation the whole time.  It was only after this questioning that Gilad got a physical checkup.

Yonit Levy in Israel, an Israeli TV anchor, said she thought the questioning in Egypt amounted to boarderline torture.  Israel will not talk with him about his experiences for the next 10 days.  He deserves a break.

PS:10/18/11 The problem is that Israel is freeing mostly 1,000 murderers for one 19 yr old kidnapped solder of theirs who hadn't done anything except to be a part of the IDF (Israel Defense Force).  Hamas and Fatah are already talking about how they'll kidnap others in order to get back their killers.  It's an imbalanced swap that is liable to cause more harm for other Israelis, but I can understand Israel doing this.  Every mother and father in Israel saw in Gilad their own son or daughter in the service.  Life to Israelis is precious.  They're lucky I was not in charge.  I would have put a chip in every Arab freed, especially the killers.  I would then have some sort of system that would allow me to know when they approached in my vicinity so that I could be prepared and defend myself.  We have chips in our pets so that they can be identified.  It's terrible to free known killers who are anxious to do it again. 

Resource: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-shocked-egypt-tv-schalit-interview-145741250.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2011/10/israeli_prisoner_freed_in_swap.html

KBOO's Debate About Israel-Gaza

Debate With Palestinian Professsor From Bethlehem University

by Nadene Goldfoot


The Palestinian Hamas representatives are so good at relating false facts that are so contrary to reality or of their purpose or history. Today a Palestinian professor from Bethlehem University was on KBOO, a Portland radio station, and was debating in some fashion a representative of our Portland Community who is supportive of Israel, Bob Horenstein. I heard such a distortion of history from this professor that it was appalling to me to listen to him . I might add that Bob was not given hardly any time for rebuttal of facts, and in one case none. Under these conditions, he did a terrific job.

In the end of this "debate", the professor commented that the Palestinian resistance (meaning bombing Israel with rockets) will not stop in order to seek peace. We say that when they stop shelling us we can sit down and talk. The professor wants the world to boycott Israel and is also against the United States for supporting us. He is looking for Obama to say, get out of their land. He has a distorted view of the land that is Israel, thinking it still belongs to the Palestinians, who were not even in the area in any large numbers, but mostly came into the area to seek jobs from the Jews. He naturally forgets these little facts. So to start with, we are never to be on the same page of reality. He continually said to go to the United Nations site for facts.

I was most distressed to hear a W. Seaman being interviewed afterwards as a spokesman for Jews for Palestinians, or some such group here in Portland. Doesn't he realize that we all bewail the death of the enemy but that we realize that a country cannot live under such conditions as being bombed, and for 8 years at that? Believe me, he would be the first to scream if his neighborhood was bombed once! He would run immediately for the states! To me Jews like this are cowards in that they cannot fathom the history or conditions that our brothers are living through in Israel. They pontificate about what is right, thinking that there is no rightousness for Jews. How obscene. True to form, this is the USA and we all have our right to speak. We Jews range from the extreme left to the extreme right, but most of Israel and Portland Jews are backing Israel's decision to stop the attacks once and for all, hopefully. My fear is that Olmert's faction wouldn't go through with it as they are led by such an eager leader of obtaining peace at all costs, costing Israel the most.

We know that the United Nations has become a different mix than what it was in 1948. Today it is topheavy with Arab nations, who stick together, being many are actually related to each other. Since they have this power, they have been issuing absurd statements that we cannot take seriously. For instance, in their cease fire resolution, they did not even mention Hamas and their terrorism against Israel. If you want to look at a good cease fire resolution, look at what Oregon just voted on and passed. Saner people realize that a country cannot put up with 8 years of shelling upon its citizens and not have the right to protect itself. Israel must prevail. Once it goes down the drain, the rest of the Western world will follow as if caught in a whirlpool of death and destruction. It's already happening in some parts of Europe as emphasized by Holland's president.

Resource: KBOO 9:30am 1/15/09