Friday, May 29, 2015

Why doctors quit


By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
May 28, 2015


Pediatrician Tom Sullivan uses the raised hand to caution a three-year-old patient to keep her hands off the computer he uses to keep a medical record of her visit at the Lorton office of All Pediatrics. (Dayna Smith/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)

About a decade ago, a doctor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating conditions of clinical practice. “How did you know to get out of medicine in 1978?” he asked with a smile.
“I didn’t,” I replied. “I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I’d chosen the wrong vocation.”
I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class’s 40th-reunion report and reading some of the entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends and the considerable achievements of their professional lives. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment, almost demoralization, with what medical practice had become.
The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to “provider.”
As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers . . . progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”
You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraordinary loss to society — and maybe to you, one day — of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical experience.
And for what? The newly elected Barack Obama told the nation in 2009 that “it just won’t save billions of dollars” — $77 billion a year, promised the administration — “and thousands of jobs, it will save lives.” He then threw a cool $27 billion at going paperless by 2015.
It’s 2015 and what have we achieved? The $27 billion is gone, of course. The $77 billion in savings became a joke. Indeed, reported the Health and Human Services inspector general in 2014, “EHR technology can make it easier to commit fraud,” as in Medicare fraud, the copy-and-paste function allowing the instant filling of vast data fields, facilitating billing inflation.
That’s just the beginning of the losses. Consider the myriad small practices that, facing ruinous transition costs in equipment, software, training and time, have closed shop, gone bankrupt or been swallowed by some larger entity.
This hardly stays the long arm of the health-care police, however. As of Jan. 1, 2015, if you haven’t gone electronic, your Medicare payments will be cut, by 1 percent this year, rising to 3 percent (potentially 5 percent) in subsequent years.
Then there is the toll on doctors’ time and patient care. One study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that emergency-room doctors spend 43 percent of their time entering electronic records information, 28 percent with patients. Another study found that family-practice physicians spend on average 48 minutes a day just entering clinical data.
Forget the numbers. Think just of your own doctor’s visits, of how much less listening, examining, even eye contact goes on, given the need for scrolling, clicking and box checking.
The geniuses who rammed this through undoubtedly thought they were rationalizing health care. After all, banking went electronic. Why not medicine?
Because banks deal with nothing but data. They don’t listen to your heart or examine your groin. Clicking boxes on an endless electronic form turns the patient into a data machine and cancels out the subtlety of a doctor’s unique feel and judgment.
Why did all this happen? Because liberals in a hurry refuse to trust the self-interested wisdom of individual practitioners, who were already adopting EHR on their own, but gradually, organically, as the technology became ripe and the costs tolerable. Instead, Washington picked a date out of a hat and decreed: Digital by 2015.
As with other such arbitrary arrogance, the results are not pretty. EHR is health care’s Solyndra. Many, no doubt, feasted nicely on the $27 billion, but the rest is waste: money squandered, patients neglected, good physicians demoralized.
Like my old classmates who signed up for patient care — which they still love — and now do data entry.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Today's Tune: Brandon Flowers - Can't Deny My Love

The Killers’ Brandon Flowers aims deep in latest solo album


May 27, 2015

Here’s one way to win Brandon Flowers’ confidence: Tell him you like a song of his that nobody else likes.
That’s what Ariel Rechtshaid did when the Killers frontman, on the hunt for a producer for his second solo album, played Rechtshaid a demo of “Still Want You,” which Flowers had originally written for his main band’s 2012 record “Battle Born.”
“I was kind of reluctant to play it,” the singer recalled recently, adding that “Still Want You” — a deeply earnest tune about holding on to love in the face of “climate change” and “nuclear distress” — had been received less than warmly by those who’d heard it, including his Killers bandmates. “But Ariel loved it right away.”
For Flowers, 33, that was a sign that the producer known for his inventive work with Vampire Weekend and the Los Angeles sister trio Haim was the right guy to partner with for his new album, “The Desired Effect,” no small thing given that Rechtshaid came from outside Flowers’ trusted circle. With the Killers and on his 2010 solo debut, “Flamingo,” the singer has collaborated with the likes of Daniel Lanois, Flood and Steve Lillywhite, all high-profile veterans of U2’s late-‘80s/early-'90s era.
The change in personnel inspired a welcome creative shift: Rather than build on Flowers’ reputation for sweeping, ultra-dramatic arena rock, “The Desired Effect” (which came out May 18) goes smaller and more personal, with weirder, funkier arrangements and lyrics that reflect his upbringing as a Mormon in Las Vegas and his life as the married father of three young children.
“I think Brandon had reached a natural arc in what he was doing and needed something different,” said Rechtshaid. “My deal was, ‘Let’s try to make the world know who you really are.’ ”
Over a tight groove punctuated by horns in opener “Dreams Come True,” Flowers describes being tantalized as a kid by “promises and visions of a country unseen.” The winsome “Lonely Town” considers “life without you around.” And then there’s “The Way It’s Always Been,” in which the singer ponders the constant churn of renewal that defines his hometown as a minimal machine beat keeping time.
“It’s not as grandiose as some of the stuff I’ve gone for before,” the singer said in West Hollywood before an appearance on “The Late Late Show With James Corden.” Which isn’t to say that he and Rechtshaid, who split recording sessions between L.A. and Las Vegas, resisted the urge to follow their impulses.
Among the musicians featured on the album are Kenny Aronoff, known for his drumming on John Mellencamp’s early-'80s hits, and pianist Bruce Hornsby, who lends his signature sound to two tracks.
In the studio, Rechtshaid said, he and Flowers found themselves “going for a Hornsby vibe” but they couldn’t quite get there on their own. “So we were like, ‘Why not just reach out to him?’ ”
“In my experience it’s pretty bulletproof, just calling people,” said Flowers, who added that he employed the same approach to get Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to appear on “I Can Change.” “You don’t think they’re going to say yes. Ever. But I think they appreciate that there are people who admire their work.”
Record-nerd catnip though they may be, these cameos weren’t about exploiting name brands, Rechtshaid insisted, but attaining a level of sonic legitimacy to match the “realness” of Flowers’ lyrics. “I didn’t want an imitation,” said the producer, and indeed there’s a specificity to many of the sounds on “The Desired Effect” that elevates the music above the shallow '80s-pop pastiche it might’ve been.
When Hornsby’s distinctive piano ripples through “Between Me and You,” which also features Tony Levin on the bass-like Chapman stick, it’s not taking you out of the moment; it’s boosting the emotion of a song about a family man’s struggle to stay connected.
One part of that struggle of course is the touring commitments that will keep Flowers away from home until the fall. “Flamingo” performed less successfully than many expected, as did the Killers’ “Battle Born,” which might be why Flowers seems to be stepping on the gas behind “The Desired Effect.” “I feel like I’m going for it a little bit more,” he said, citing a promotional push that helped drive the album to the top 10 of the iTunes chart.
For an artist famous for conveying a larger-than-life aesthetic, Flowers is remarkably unruffled by the challenge of adapting the album’s relatively intimate songs to the stage.
“A good song is a good song, and a small song can become a big song,” he said. “I’m so used to having these giant choruses and kind of going for it. But I feel like something like ‘Lonely Town’ could translate in a big arena.”
Then again, the Brandon Flowers road show is considerably more compact than the Killers’. In recent years the band has played Staples Center and the Hollywood Bowl, but when Flowers’ solo tour reaches L.A. in September, he’ll be at the Wiltern.
“Yeah, that’s hard on my ego,” he said with a laugh. “No, it’s fine. It wasn’t that long ago that the Killers were in clubs. I like big stages, it’s true — I like to spread my wings.
“But it’s cool,” he added. “I mean, these shows aren’t that small.”

Rush Limbaugh as a Silencing Trigger

Instead of talking about Kirsten Powers’s new book, NPR goes down a rabbit hole.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez — May 28, 2015
Screen shot: May 6, 2015


Kirsten Powers has done a public service with her new book The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech, a bit of a thankless task if Twitter is any indication.

Still, Mary Eberstadt has noted the treasure that it is. Peggy Noonan has as well. So has Kathleen Parker. I wrote about it here the other day.

And Rush Limbaugh has recommended it. Which, in many ways, changes everything. His word of recommendation and praise can be a great gift to authors.
On his show the other day, Rush said:
Now, she’s still a lib, proudly says so, but as I say, she’s not rock-ribbed with this. And many times, in fact, on a Fox show here or there — you know, occasionally, ladies and gentlemen, I find myself involved in a controversial affair. Doesn’t happen a whole lot, but sometimes I do, and on many of those occasions, Kirsten, using her instincts, has refused to join the chorus in whatever the criticism of me is. And she’s been right on those occasions.  
I thought writing this book was a gutsy thing for her to do because it’s not like somebody like me writing a book describing how the Left tries to silence people. I mean, she goes after ’em, folks. This is not a soft-pedaled little commentary or analysis on theory. She goes after these people with explicit, undeniable examples of how people on the left are literally trying to deny average, ordinary Americans access to the First Amendment.  
They are literally trying to destroy people. And as a liberal, it bothers her. She is the old classical liberal, I think is the term. An old classical liberal is not what a liberal is today. Liberal today means extreme, fascist, statist, intolerant, full-fledged, almost Stalinist type person. And it bothers her. She has written about it complete with examples, and because she comes from the left doing this, she has become this immense target of these people. I don’t know that she was prepared for it. She said she was, but I don’t know that anybody is.
And then he made a prediction:
So here comes Kirsten Powers, an appreciated and endowed, accepted ranking member of the Left calling them out. And so now they’ve gotta destroy her. She’s no different than if she were me, as far as they are concerned. They used to like her, they used to appreciate her, and some still do, but she’s got to be shut up. 
And then, while on National Public Radio, Powers found herself in what became a debate about Rush Limbaugh and his purported racism, for criticizing President Obama.

This came just after she talked about how some topic — like marriage — is made “radioactive” and becomes a “conversation stopper” instead of a “starter.”


Rush Limbaugh as a topic himself is frequently used as a bludgeon for intimidation and silencing, in the fashion that she chronicles in her book.

After this experience, Powers may just wind up with a new chapter for the paperback, dedicated to Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh is, in myriad ways, a gift — and not just to authors with books to sell. He is a man of intense gratitude and generosity and one of the great communicators of our day. If you’ve listened to him for any extensive amount of time, as many of us have, you know he communicates principles with clarity and wit and a depth of understanding. Everyone knows he talks but he is also a voracious reader and listener — which takes some humility, which, yes, even the man who for almost 30 years has declared on his show that he has half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair, has — who frequently holds up more good to more people in one hour of his three-hour show than many of us can do in our entire lives. Rarely in news and commentary about him does the man in full appear.
Rush Limbaugh as a topic himself is frequently used as a bludgeon for intimidation and silencing.
And still on the air he is. And still being used by many — including quite well-intentioned people who believe what is said about him — to distract from the preponderance of Davids who are being crushed by a Goliath masquerading as supreme benevolence.

I love something a wounded veteran at National Review’s 50th-anniversary party (our beloved WFB was still with us) told him — Mark Levin points to it in his book, Rescuing Sprite: “We all have our roles.” Rush was embarrassed that this self-sacrificing American without an arm was grateful to him. But the Marine spoke a truth we could all afford to hear and appreciate, not to fill us with pride, but to make us more humble: to trust that if we pray, if we labor, if we encourage the better angels, we can do some good in the world, as maddening and confusing and heartbreaking as it can be.

I do hope that both people who do and people who do not watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh buy The Silencing. In gratitude. In openness. In a desire for something better in our politics and in our conversations — on NPR and in daily life.

And I’d hope that anyone with a media platform — especially on the Left — might take her book under consideration and cover the suppression of free speech, instead of giving into your temptation to be distracted. We all have our roles — and styles, temperaments, platforms — and may we all use them to do some good. Just like Rush Limbaugh. Just like Kirsten Powers.

– Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large at National Review Online.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Confidential Meeting Seeks to Sway Synod to Accept Same-Sex Unions


Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University.


By Edward Pentin
http://www.ncregister.com/
May 26, 2015


Pontifical Gregorian University

ROME — A one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.

Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, at the invitation of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, Switzerland and France — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Markus Büchel and Archbishop Georges Pontier.

One of the key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.
Participants also spoke of the need to “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”

One Swiss priest discussed the “importance of the human sex drive,” while another participant, talking about holy Communion for remarried divorcees, asked: “How can we deny it, as though it were a punishment for the people who have failed and found a new partner with whom to start a new life?”
Marco Ansaldo, a reporter for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, who was present at the meeting, said the words seemed “revolutionary, uttered by clergymen.”

French Biblicist and Ratzinger Prize-winner Anne-Marie Pelletier praised the dialogue that took place between theologians and bishops as a “real sign of the times.” According to La Stampa, another Italian daily newspaper, Pelletier said the Church needs to enter into “a dynamic of mutual listening,” in which the magisterium continues to guide consciences, but she believes it can only effectively do so if it “echoes the words of the baptized.” 

The meeting took the “risk of the new, in fidelity with Christ,” she claimed. The article also quoted a participant as saying the synod would be a “failure” if it simply continued to affirm what the Church has always taught.

The closed-door meeting, masterminded by the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx, was first proposed at the annual meeting of the heads of the three bishops’ conferences, held in January in Marseille, France.

The study day took place just days after the people of Ireland voted in a referendum in support of same-sex “marriage” and on the same day as the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops met in Rome. Some observers did not see the timing as a coincidence.

The synod council has been drawing up the instrumentum laboris (working document) for the October synod on the family. Integrated into the document will be the responses of a questionnaire sent to laity around the world. Those responses, particularly from Switzerland and Germany, appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of the Church adapting her teachings to the secular world.

Why the Lack of Publicity?

No one would say why the study day was held in confidence. So secret was the meeting that even prominent Jesuits at the Gregorian were completely unaware of it. The Register learned about it when Jean-Marie Guénois leaked the information in a story in Le Figaro.

Speaking to the Register as he left the meeting, Cardinal Marx insisted the study day wasn’t secret. But he became irritated when pressed about why it wasn’t advertised, saying he had simply come to Rome in a “private capacity” and that he had every right to do so. Close to Pope Francis and part of his nine-member council of cardinals, the cardinal is known to be especially eager to reform the Church’s approach to homosexuals. During his Pentecost homily last Sunday, Cardinal Marx called for a “welcoming culture” in the Church for homosexuals, saying it’s “not the differences that count, but what unites us.”

Cardinal Marx is also not alone, among those attending the meeting, in pushing for radical changes to the Church’s life. The head of the Swiss bishops, Bishop Büchel of St. Gallen, has spoken openly in favor of women’s ordination, saying in 2011 that the Church should “pray that the Holy Spirit enables us to read the signs of the times.” Archbishop Pontier, head of the French bishops, is also known to have heterodox leanings.

The meeting’s organizers were unwilling to disclose the names of everyone who took part, but the Register has obtained a full list of participants. They included Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer, general secretary of the German bishops’ conference, who has been the leading figure behind the recent reform of German Church labor laws to controversially allow remarried divorcees and homosexual couples to work in Church institutions.

Father Schockenhoff

Among the specialists present was Father Eberhard Schockenhoff, a moral theologian. Faithful German Catholics are particularly disturbed about the rise to prominence of Father Schockenhoff, who is understood to be the “mastermind” behind much of the challenge to settled Church teachings among the German episcopate and, by implication, at the synod on the family itself.

A prominent critic of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth), as well as a strong supporter of homosexual clergy and those pushing for reform in the area of sexual ethics, Father Schockenhoff is known to be the leading adviser of the German bishops in the run-up to the synod.

In 2010, he gave an interview in which he praised the permanence and solidarity shown in some same-sex relationships as “ethically valuable.” He urged that any assessment of homosexual acts “must take a back seat” on the grounds that the faithful are becoming “increasingly distant from the Church’s sexual morality,” which appears “unrealistic and hostile to them.” The Pope and the bishops should “take this seriously and not dismiss it as laxity,” he said.

Father Schockenhoff has also gone on record saying that moral theology must be “liberated from the natural law” and that conscience should be based on the “life experience of the faithful.” 

He has also insisted that the indissolubility of marriage is “not seriously called into question” by admitting remarried divorcees to holy Communion, writing a book to push his thesis in 2011 entitled "Opportunities for reconciliation?: The Church and the divorced and remarried". He has further proposed that the term the “official Church” should be done away with because of a growing gap between the institutional Church and the Church of the faithful. 

Also present was Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Sant’Egidio lay community; Jesuit Father Andreas Batlogg, professor of philosophy and theology and chief editor of the liberal periodical Stimmen der Zeit (Voices of the Time) — the journal has devoted its June issue to same-sex relationships and the synod — and Salesian Msgr. Markus Graulich, prelate auditor of the tribunal of the Roman Rota, one of very few Curial officials to attend. Some of those participating, such as Msgr. Graulich, took part in the previous synod.

Media Participation

Also noted were the large number of media representatives. Journalists from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German broadcasters ZDF and ARD, the Italian daily La Repubblica and French-Catholic media La Croix and I-Media were also present. Their presence was “striking,” said one observer, who predicted they will be used to promote the agenda of the subject matter under discussion in the weeks leading up to the synod.

Monday’s meeting is just the latest attempt to subtly steer the upcoming synod in a direction opposed by many faithful Catholics. A statement on the study day released by the German bishops’ conference May 26 said there was a “reflection on biblical hermeneutics” — widely seen as code words for understanding the Bible differently from Tradition — and the need for a “reflection on a theology of love.”

Critics say this, too, is undermining Church teaching. By replacing the theology of the body with a “theology of love,” it creates an abstract interpretation that separates sex from procreation, thereby allowing forms of extramarital unions and same-sex attractions based simply on emotions rather than biological reality. Gone, say critics, is the Catholic view of marriage, which should be open to procreation.

The statement, which conspicuously failed to mention sin, ended by saying that “further discussion on the future of marriage and family is necessary and possible” and that it would be “enriched by a further, intensive theological reflection.”

This, too, is code for wanting a change in teaching, giving the impression that the doctrine in these areas is open to change. But for the Catholic Church, it is a settled issue.

“Imagine if the Church accepted homosexual relationships,” said one source speaking on condition of anonymity. “Ultimately, that is what these people want.”
Edward Pentin is the Register’s Rome correspondent.


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/confidential-meeting-seeks-to-sway-synod-to-accept-same-sex-unions/#ixzz3bKlbbUyh

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Obama Gives Green Light to Force Palestinian Statehood?


Posted By Joseph Klein On May 26, 2015 @ 12:06 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 9 Comments
palestine-un-mahmoud-abbas[1]President Barack Obama visited an influential conservative Washington D.C. synagogue on May 22nd with the avowed purpose of assuring his audience of about 1000 people that his “commitment to Israel’s security is and always will be unshakeable.” Donning a yarmulke and speaking from the synagogue sanctuary’s bimah where the Torah is recited, Obama claimed that “no U.S. President, no administration has done more to ensure that Israel can protect itself than this one.” Carried away by his own self-proclaimed support for Israel, he declared himself an “honorary member of the tribe.”

Obama’s understatement that the “Palestinians are not the easiest of partners” evoked laughter from the audience. He reiterated to applause his commitment to a two-state solution “for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security,” while saying he recognizes the “existential risks” Israel would face from a bad deal with the Palestinians that does not “take into account the genuine dangers of terrorism and hostility.”

As usual, President Obama’s words are not matched by his actions. Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric is often at variance with what Obama actually does. He promised his largely Jewish audience that America has Israel’s back. In reality, Obama is stabbing Israel in the back. He is risking an existential threat to Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran, apparently willing to make concession after concession that will mean no unfettered inspections by international inspectors to enforce whatever nuclear enrichment and R&D restrictions are agreed upon with Iran. Then by Obama’s own admission, after about 12 years or so, the restrictions on Iran’s breakout time to build a nuclear bomb would virtually disappear.

Obama is simultaneously pursuing behind Israel’s back the possibility of a UN Security Council resolution that would give the Palestinians virtually everything they are looking for without meaningfully dealing with “the genuine dangers of terrorism and hostility” that Palestinian jihadists still pose to Israeli civilians.

According to an exclusive Debkafile report [2], President Obama has given the “green light to European governments to file a UN Security Council motion proclaiming an independent Palestinian state.” The French government has been leading the Europeans’ initiative to set forth the basic terms of a final peace agreement in a Security Council resolution favorable to the Palestinian position. The resolution may include a target date for finalizing the agreement and requiring Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, with the potential for further Security Council action such as sanctions if Israel does not comply. Senior Obama administration officials reportedly have been meeting with their French counterparts to plot a common strategy at the UN for such a binding resolution.

Thus, the Obama administration appears to be ready to break with long-standing bipartisan American policy and support the Palestinian initiative at the UN rather than rely on direct negotiations between the parties. Obama is thereby furthering the Palestinians’ diplomatic strategy to isolate Israel as a pariah state in the international community. The Debkafile report points to a probable reason for this dramatic move, in addition to the Obama administration’s intense pique with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The administration may be seeking to use its support of a UN pro-Palestinian resolution “as currency for procuring Saudi and Gulf support for…their acceptance of the nuclear deal shaping up with Iran.” Israel is clearly on the losing side of this exchange at both ends.

Obama’s definition of a two-state solution is essentially the same as the Palestinians’ definition, which their Arab allies support. Israel would be required to withdraw to the highly insecure pre-June 1967 lines, with minor agreed upon land swaps. They would be expected to give up control over East Jerusalem, which would become the capital of the new Palestinian state. Nothing is being demanded of the Palestinians in return except perhaps an unenforceable promise to stop their terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, a request that Hamas has rejected outright. The Palestinians are not being asked to give up their claim of a so-called right of return, under which millions of descendants of the original Palestinian “refugees” would be permitted to settle within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel. Obama’s mouthing of concern about the “existential risks” that Israel would face from a bad deal with the Palestinians is nothing more than idle words.

Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have continued to indicate that they have no intention of conceding any ground on their claim of a right of return. This purported right is passed down from generation to generation, according to Palestinian leaders, and will not go away even if an independent Palestinian state were to be established on every inch of land in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, the Palestinians’ definition of a two-state solution consists of one state of their own, based on the pre-1967 dividing line with Israel, and a residual Israeli state within which millions of Palestinians with “refugee” status would have a right to claim land as their own based on some sort of perpetual birthright.

For example, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told young Palestinian activists last year [3] that the right of return was a personal right passed down from father to son. “All the refugees who number 5 million today, along with their offspring, are considered 1948 refugees,” Abbas said, as quoted by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “There are no refugees who came from Nablus or Ramallah. They are all from Tiberius, Safed, Acre, Nazareth, Jaffa, Beersheba, and so on. What we do not want to accept is the ‘Jewish state.’ We shall never agree to recognize the Jewish state.”

In commemoration of this year’s 67th anniversary of the Nakba (“Day of the Catastrophe”) which fell on May 15, 2015, Palestinian officials were quoted by MEMRI [4] as pressing the right of return as a perpetual right that will never be conceded away.

“What happened in 1948 will never happen again,” Abbas said in his commemoration speech. The Palestinians will not accept any “state with temporary borders.” The implication is that even a border based on the pre-June 1967 lines is regarded by Abbas as only temporary, since the Palestinian “refugees” also have the right to reclaim their ancestors’ so-called ‘homes’ within pre-June 1967 Israel. Yet, as Abbas has said in the past, Israelis would not be permitted to stay in the West Bank as citizens or residents in the new Palestinian state. In other words, Abbas envisions a Judenrein state of Palestine living side by side with an Israeli state confined to its pre-June 1967 boundaries that is expected to forfeits its Jewish character with the absorption of potentially millions of Palestinian “refugees.” And President Obama’s support of a pro-Palestinian resolution at the UN Security Council will mean he is on board with this perverted version of the “two-state solution.”

Abbas, while speaking out of one side of mouth about non-violent resistance, promised in the same Nakba anniversary speech that “religious wars that will spare no one” if there is any jeopardy to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. He is still seeking to partner with Hamas in a so-called reconciliation government. Hamas’s continued vow to destroy the state of Israel completely and kill Jews wherever the jihadists find them does not deter Abbas one bit. Yet Obama appears to trust Abbas as a “partner” – albeit “not the easiest of partners” – for peace!

Abbas’s associate Munib Al-Masri, who was instrumental in the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation efforts, declared in his remarks in commemoration of the Nakba anniversary: “While the grandparents and parents are indeed deceased, they have bequeathed to their offspring the right of return to the cities and villages from which they themselves were expelled. The right of return is an individual and a collective right, and cannot be relinquished.”

Fatah’s Office of Information and Culture issued a statement that said: “The right of return is as sacred as the right to life. No force in the world… can usurp it from our people or force our people to obey its policy.”

Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha’ath wrote: “My right to return here has not been lost. Safed, the city of my birth, is my city; Gaza, the city of my father and his family, is my city; Jaffa is my city, and glorious Jerusalem is my city. Nablus, my wife’s city, as well as Hebron, Acre, Bethlehem, Beersheba and Nazareth – they are all my cities.”

The Palestinians want it all and are using the United Nations and other international organizations such as the International Criminal Court to achieve their long-term goal, no matter how long it takes. Obama appears willing to lend a helping hand.

President Obama is now on a charm offensive to persuade sympathetic Jewish-American audiences to trust him on Iran and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The truth is however, that for anybody who truly cares about Israel’s survival, Obama cannot be trusted. He is willing to sell Israel down the river to secure his own legacy as a “peacemaker.”

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here [5].

LIKE [6] Frontpagemag.com on Facebook and Subscribe [7] to Jamie Glazov Productions [7].

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com


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[3] Abbas told young Palestinian activists last year: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7874.htm

[4] Palestinian officials were quoted by MEMRI: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8573.htm





[7] Subscribehttp://jamieglazov.com/