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Friday, October 17, 2014
Text: Kerry blames Israel for ISIL - shows clueless about real situation in region

Text: Kerry blames Israel for ISIS - shows clueless about real situation in
region
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA 17 October 2014

Here's the latest argument by Mr. Kerry for why those damn Israelis are to
blame for ISIL - and that Israel had better damn listen to the master's
voice and agree to divide Jerusalem, withdraw from the West Bank and leave
the Jewish State's security to a piece of paper.

"As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about
the ISIL coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in
the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get
peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of
recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a
lot of heads nodding – they had to respond to. And people need to understand
the connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and
denial and absence of dignity, and Eid celebrates the opposite of all of
that."

Yes the Arab leaders "talk the talk" when they meet with Mr. Kerry.

BUT ITS JUST THAT - TALK.

So while they "talk the talk" when they see Mr. Kerry they actually don't
consider the Palestinians to be a priority.

Ask the Palestinians. They will tell you that the Arab world leaders don't
really give a damn about them.

They are very well aware that there are other priorities.

And - that's right - the top security people from the countries represented
by many of the Arab leaders Mr. Kerry talks with about ISIL ARE ALREADY
ENGAGED IN DIRECT CONSULTATION AND COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL in the common
struggle against this threat to the region and the world.

As for what motivates support for ISIL - if Mr. Kerry's advisor are
actually telling him that the plight of the Palestinians is a major
motivation then he better seek the advice of some people who actually speak
Arabic. There are all kinds of reasons for the support for ISIS -
frustration over economic conditions and corruption (ISIS robs banks and
then murders, expels and confiscates the belongings of local "infidels" and
others - so it has money, housing and food to distribute etc. - and it thus
is able to provide an improved life for the remaining population) and
hatred for the West (that's the USA - not because the USA supports Israel
but because the USA represents western values). Israel is far from the top
of the list.

Moving on to the open secret: the absolute last thing most of these Arab
leaders actually want in the region today is a sovereign Palestinian state.

Yes. they may "talk the talk" - but unlike Mr. Kerry, these Arab leaders
don't think that pigs can fly.

Unlike Mr. Kerry they very realistically realize and recognizes that a
sovereign Palestinian state today in the West Bank could readily become a
major source of regional unrest and terror.

So it comes down to this: will Mr. Kerry ever come to grips with reality or
are we going to have to count the days - hoping that the democratic process
in the United States will ultimately bring in leadership that operates on
the basis of reality rather than fanciful dreams.

==============
Remarks at a Reception in Honor of Eid al-Adha

Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Delegates Lounge
Washington, DC
October 16, 2014
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/10/233058.htm

SECRETARY KERRY: Shaarik, thank you very much for the introduction. Thanks
for your leadership, and assalamu alaikum to all of you. Thank you, and also
a late Eid Mubarak. I will tell you I’ve been having lots of phone
conversations with your foreign ministers or your prime ministers or one
official or another who have been at the Haaj as they’re talking to me, and
they found time in between to be able to have a conversation, and I was very
grateful for that. And I hope those of you who had a chance to partake in
that found it as rewarding and as personal as it is supposed to be. It’s a
pleasure to be able to welcome everybody here, and it’s really a pleasure
for us in the State Department to have a chance to be able to celebrate
Eid-al-Adha, even though we’re late – and that’s because of my schedule.

I was just in Cairo, as you know, where a terrific $5.4 billion was raised
in order to help rebuild Gaza, and we could not have emphasized more times
how critical it is not to rebuild it so it is destroyed again. It is
imperative that we find a way to get back to the negotiations for what
everybody knows is, in the end, the only way to go forward that makes sense.
And the alternative is in so many ways difficult.

But what we’re trying to do here in the State Department – and Shaarik is a
part of that mosaic that we’re putting together here. We have the first
faith-based office; we have the office reaching out to the Islamic world.
And when he started drafting our national strategic approach as a leader of
a faith community, he began that strategy with two words: “religion
matters.” And he’s made it his mission to reach out to faith communities to
solve global problems, whether it’s been at the White House or at the
Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and I couldn’t be more pleased
that he has joined our efforts here at the State Department as the Special
Representative to Muslim Communities.

I’ve often said to people that if I went back to college today, I would at
least minor, if not major, in comparative religion – and a lot of other
things that I didn’t major in, I might add – because I have found in my
journeys through the world over these 29-plus years as a senator and now in
the year and a half, year and three-quarters I’ve been Secretary of State,
there is no place in the world where in one way or the other it isn’t
affecting an outlook. And even in places where people are nonbelievers or
people have a different philosophy rather than one of the major religions of
the world, there are themes and currents that run through every life
philosophy, every single approach, whether it’s Native Americanism or
Confucianism or – you can find that there’s been this passage through
history from the scriptures – from the Qu’ran, from the Torah, from the
Bible – that all come together, and even from other places, where they’ve
been incorporated and inculcated through the sermons and preachings and
teachings of religious leaders. And we know this today.

So tonight, what we’re really doing as we celebrate late but nevertheless
celebrate Eid al-Adha, is that we are celebrating sort of the meaning and
importance of sacrifice and devotion in our lives. And, of course, the
Jewish religion just went through its holiest moment of the year with Yom
Kippur, which is also a moment of huge introspection and re-evaluation. Eid
al-Adha is a special time for charity and compassion and for prayer and
reflection. And during this period of time, as you all know, you’ll find
everybody practicing it in their own way wherever it is that they are in the
world. Young girl somewhere in New Delhi praying outside of a mosque, or
kids or adults in Pakistan, girls singing songs and painting their hands
with henna, or Shiites in the holy city of Najaf or fellow Shi’a celebrating
Eid-e-Ghorban in Iran. They’re all these derivatives that all come the very
same thing. And that’s the spirit of Eid. And in a sense, this is a moment
that really shares with us a common sense at an important time about the
sense of possibilities that we’re looking at in the world today.

So we all know – I look around, I see a lot of very familiar faces here, and
I thank so many members of our diplomatic corps for being here with us
today – this is a difficult time. It’s a very complex time, and there are
many currents that are loose out there that have brought us to this moment.
The extremism that we see, the radical exploitation of religion which is
translated into violence, has no basis in any of the real religions. There’s
nothing Islamic about what ISIL/Daesh stands for or is doing to people.

And so we all have a larger mission here. And obviously, history is filled
with that. I mean, you go back to the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and other
periods of time, Protestants, Catholics, others who have fought. It’s not
new to us. Tragically, it’s more prominent because media is more available
today, the messaging is there, everybody is more aware on an instantaneous
basis of what is happening. And of course it’s exploited by people who
engage in this.

So – but it’s still complicated, and for other reasons. We’re living at a
point in time where there are just more young people demanding what they see
the rest of the world having than at any time in modern history. And when
you have 65 percent of a country, as you do in many countries in the Middle
East or South Central Asia or elsewhere, in north Horn of Africa, that are
under the age of 35 – 65 percent – and 60 percent under the age of 30, and
50 percent under the age of 25, you are going to have a governance problem
unless your governance is really addressing the demands and needs of that
part of the population. And I don’t care who you are or what kind of
government you have, nobody is impregnable with respect to those demands and
those needs, and they have to be responded to at some point in time.

Don’t forget that what is happening now in Syria started with young people
going out and demonstrating for jobs and for opportunity and for dignity and
respect. And when they were met by clubs and repression, their parents went
out to defend them. They joined in and said, “No, don’t do this to our kids.
We want this.” And then they were met with bullets. And that’s what has
brought this incredible, chaotic moment where we now have 10 million people
or so displaced – a million and a half in Lebanon, million and a half in
Turkey, a million and a half-plus or more in Jordan – and internally, huge
population displaced. And Eid actually speaks to that, because this is a
moment of charity. This is a moment when Ibrahim is celebrated for not
slaying – for being willing to slay his son in order to provide for people
and to prove something.

And so we have to stop and think about that in the context of this challenge
that we face today. I think that it is more critical than ever that we be
fighting for peace, and I think it is more necessary than ever. As I went
around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL
coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region
who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between
Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of
street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a lot of heads
nodding – they had to respond to. And people need to understand the
connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and denial
and absence of dignity, and Eid celebrates the opposite of all of that.

So what we need to do is recognize that we need to build peace through
specific partnerships. One partnership is specifically the effort to try to
drive towards this peace, to have a compromise, to find a way to create two
states that can live together side by side, two peoples, with both of their
aspirations being respected. I still believe that’s possible, and I still
believe we need to work towards it. We also need to figure out how – and I
think what’s happening in Iraq is an interesting beginning of that, where
Daesh has kind of drawn a line and made people stop and think, and Sunni and
Shia are beginning to realize there’s a common problem out there and there
is a way to try to work together. And the new government gives a breath of
fresh air to that possibility that that could happen.

In addition to that, we remember that lots of countries are making
sacrifices in the spirit of Eid-al-Adha right now with respect to the
refugees that they’re taking in, with respect to the emergency food programs
they’re engaged in, the emergency aid. So this is really a moment to reflect
deeply on how we will deal not just with the manifestation of the symptom,
which is what the violence and the extremism is, but with the underlying
causes which go to this question of governance and corruption and a whole
issue of how you meet the needs of people.

And that’s where our partnership has to be not just for peace but for
prosperity, shared prosperity, where everybody has an ability to be able to
find a job, get the education, be able to reach the brass ring, and it is
not just reserved for a privileged few.

And finally, we have to build a partnership for sustainability of the planet
itself, and that brings us to something like climate change, which is
profoundly having an impact in various parts of the world, where droughts
are occurring not at a 100-year level but at a 500-year level in places that
they haven’t occurred, floods of massive proportions, diminishment of water
for crops and agriculture at a time where we need to be talking about
sustainable food.

So I think this is an important moment, and that’s why we’ve launched a lot
of different initiatives like the Malaysia initiative, the Beehive
Initiative at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. And that’s why I’m going
to Jakarta day after tomorrow to be there for the inauguration of a man who
was elected president in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country, in
large part because of his commitment to good, honest governance. And that’s
why we’re engaging in private sector efforts to help the young Syrian
refugees. And in many places we see the desert increasingly creeping into
East Africa. We’re seeing herders and farmers pushed into deadly conflict as
a result. We’re seeing the Himalayan glaciers receding, which will affect
the water that is critical to rice and to other agriculture on both sides of
the Himalayas. These are our challenges.

So it’s a good moment to come together. I’ve talked longer than I meant to.
Shaarik is going to have the chance to say a few words. I need to run to
another meeting, which I hope you will forgive me for doing. But I just hope
that the meaning of this moment can over this next year, by all of us in a
cooperative and respectful way, mutual respect, without anybody asserting
that they have a better way or a better answer, but listening to each other,
that we can work together in a good spirit to be able to address these
concerns. The world is looking to all of us. We are the leaders. We have
this opportunity in this moment to try to make a difference. And it is
imperative that every single one of us make every effort to listen to each
other, to do everything in our power to be able to have an impact. And I’m
confident that in the days ahead we can.

I just spent a number of hours in negotiations. I was with Lavrov talking
about what we can do to change things between Russia and the United States,
with Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran, where have a very tough negotiation
that affects a lot of you in this room. And believe me, we are mindful of
that, and we will continue to work, however, to try to find a fair and
thoughtful way that achieves all of our goals. And I think we can look with
pride at a young Muslim girl, the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace
Prize, who’s shown such courage in her effort to try to fight for rights and
to stand up and improve a lot of other people. And that’s part of what we
should reflect on as we think about the meaning of this particular
celebration.

So I really thank you for coming tonight. I wish I could stay and talk
through the evening. It would be much nicer than the meeting I have to go
to. (Laughter.) But I can’t and so, again, Eid Mubarak belatedly, and I wish
all of you well as we work together going forward. Thank you all, and God
bless. Thank you very, very much. (Applause.)

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