Memo to Bardem and Cruz: Sound off when you really know what you’re talking about

IN her ignorance, Penelope Cruz probably best summed up a tranche of addled opinion of the latest Israel-Hamas war, admitting in a letter to USA Today, ‘I’m not an expert on the situation and I’m aware of the complexity of it.’

This mea culpa was a backtrack on an earlier, incendiary ‘open letter’ she’d co-signed – along with a host of other right-on, Spanish showbiz luvvies – written by her actor husband, Javier Bardem, which essentially laid the entire blame for the fighting on Israel and lambasted Europe for ‘allowing genocide to happen.’

Renowned for his fiery radicalism, Bardem damned the conflict as ‘a war of occupation and extermination against a people without means, confined to a minimum of land, without water and where hospitals, ambulances and children are targets and alleged terrorists.’

Without understating the unimaginable horrors suffered by Gaza’s innocents, the actor’s sanctimonious rant was as misguided as the countless Hamas missiles that annihilated their own people and a shameful distortion of reality, while wilfully flouting facts.

Why, for instance, didn’t Bardem mention nearly 3,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians, deliberately intended to incite retaliation; the millions of dollars of Israeli-supplied cement, electricity and water meant for civilian purposes, but diverted to construct a labyrinth of terror tunnels; Hamas using civilians – even reporters – as human shields and hospitals as HQs; ambulances hijacked to ferry fighters and missiles launchers; or that there’s nothing ‘alleged’ about Hamas being a gang of homicidal terrorists, because the UN, US and the EU long ago judged them so?

NO CRUZ CONTROL? Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz, and her husband, Javier Bardem, tried to backtrack over their Gaza ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel

At least, the gobby thespian fell short of seconding Spanish writer, Antonio Gala’s viciously anti-Semitic tirade in El Mundo, reprising the 1492 expulsions by proposing Spain’s 50,000 Jews be kicked out, since ‘it is though they were not made to co-exist’.

Gala’s rabid racism, though, is not unusual in a nation of forty-five million, with an inglorious history for persecuting minorities, particularly Jews.

In a 2008 survey by the independent Pew Research Centre on global attitudes to anti-Semitism, Spain saw the worst and highest recorded rise in Europe, where the study reported unfavourable views of Jews had doubled from 21% in 2005 to 46% among Spaniards.

According to Pew, only 37% of the Spanish viewed Jews favourably, in contrast to 50% in Poland, 64% in Germany and 73% in Britain.

A later poll by Spain’s Education Ministry stoked further consternation, revealing more than 50% of students between 12 and 18 said they would not want to sit next to a Jew in class.

The level of Spanish anti-Semitism was abetted by the then far-Left prime minister, Jose Luis Zapatero, sporting a Yasser Arafat-style scarf and regularly attacking Israel at pro-Palestinian events, which usually descend into vitriolic Jew-bashing.

Zapatero was also reported to have stated that he ‘understood the Nazis’ when it came to ‘the Jewish question.’

But, while Zapatero ignored protests from angry US legislators, Bardem’s inflammatory bombast has provoked worldwide outrage, not least from fellow Oscar winner, Jon Voigt, who accused the Spaniard of ‘stupidity’ and fanning the flames of anti-Semitism.

Using the platform of the Hollywood Reporter, he provide Bardem, Cruz & Co with a history lesson about Arab attacks on Israel since 1948 ‘when the country was created through the United Nations, including the 1967 and 1973 wars. And when Israel was not fighting a major war, it was defending itself against terrorist campaigns.’

Voigt, a non-Jew and father of Angelina Jolie, called on the purblind celebs who signed ‘that poison letter against Israel’ to ‘examine their motives’, adding, ‘Can you take back the fire of anti-Semitism raging all over the world now?’

And, for extra measure, he reminded them, ‘You had a great responsibility to use your celebrity for good. Instead, you have defamed the only democratic country of goodwill in the Middle East: Israel.’

Days later, then, Bardem followed his semi-repentant wife in performing verbal acrobatics, saying he regretted using the word ‘genocide’, claiming his diatribe was only directed at Israel’s government and military.

‘I have great respect for the people of Israel and deep compassion for their losses,’ he added, hoping to wipe the plate clean of slurs.

SPAIN’S SHAME: Zapatero – in a ‘terrorist chic’ scarf – presided over a country with Europe’s highest level of anti-Semitism

At least it dawned on him to withdraw any allusion to ‘genocide’, a highly emotive and abused term that – quoting Chambers dictionary – specifically refers to ‘the deliberate extermination of a racial, national, religious or ethnic group.’

Nothing diminishes the carnage of Gaza… lifeless children, weeping parents, buildings reduced to rubble. But, despite Hamas’s unverified claims of 1,875 deaths – 430 of whom they said were under 15 – it was not a genocide.

Meanwhile, the terror group’s arithmetic is being contested by Israel and independent arbitrators, whose initial estimate states at least 900 Hamas fighters perished in Operation Protective Edge.

So onlookers shooting from the lip, while ignoring – or, in the case of Cruz, being ignorant of – salient facts make a mockery of their own, ill-informed opinions.

As the fog of war temporarily cleared during a 72-hour truce broken – again! – by Hamas, other, too, might be rueing their rush to judgement, including the Obama administration.

Last week the State Department’s kneejerk reaction to an Israeli attack on a rocket launcher, said to have killed 10 in a UN school, was to brand it ‘disgraceful’.

New evidence, backed by photos, strongly points to the missile strike hitting the road outside, where a crater is plainly evident, and that dead bodies were moved into the school by Hamas – with the corpse of a small girl added to hype the PR impact.

After the two, previous Hamas-Israel wars, it should be patently obvious to sensible, fair-minded folk that there are no depths to the terror gang’s skulduggery.

Even Judge Richard Goldstone was forced to retract the ‘findings’ of his notorious report on the 2009 conflict, admitting later, ‘If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.’

However, the blinkered Left – and its dimwit celeb cheerleaders – only see and hear what they want to, blurring fallacy into ‘fact’.

BARDEM BASHER: Oscar winner, Jon Voigt, trashed the Spanish star and his actress wife for their ‘poison-pen letter against Israel’

And their abiding, pathological, obsessive prejudice against Israel now openly spills over into old-fashioned Jew-hatred, as forests of placards spelt out so unambiguously in so-called ‘peace marches’  across Europe during recent weeks that morphed into attacks on innocent Jews.

Bizarrely, I find it implausible how the Left’s saintly bigots can defend Islamo-fascists, like Hamas, whose cherished wish is to slaughter Christians, Jews and gays, subjugate women and refashion the world according to a loony, 7^th Century religious dogma.

Also, I have to wonder why these self-styled do-gooders, wrapped in their ‘terrorist chic’, keffir scarfs, don’t give a hoot about Christians crucified in ISIS’s new ‘caliphate’ across Iraq and Syria – or Yazidis facing genuine genocide – Russia grabbing a huge chunk of Ukraine, China murdering Tibetans wholesale or Iran persecuting opponents of its crackpot regime.

If they do, then where are the demos?

And, lest I forget the useful-idiot apologists for Islamic savagery – Jimmy Carter, Paddy Ashdown and Baroness Warsi take note – forever claiming Israel’s defence of its citizenry only serves as a recruiting sergeant for Muslim extremism, the simple answer is: it doesn’t, as history is my witness.

Maybe they should share their judgemental folly with relatives of the victims of 9/11 (2001), the Madrid bombings (2004), 7/7 (2005) and the countless other terror outrages to see how their inanity is viewed.

So, yes, certainly protest the hideous death toll in Gaza, but, instead of continually castigating Israel, point an accusing finger at who’s really to blame – Hamas.

Eat your ‘red line’ words, Mr. President – or show some real stomach for a fight

There’s a question I’d like to ask Barack Obama right now: Where does a red line become a green light?

You’ve guessed, of course, because the answer is self-evident… in Syria.

Nonetheless, I’d be interested to hear how the US President unhooks himself off a peg he fashioned a year ago, when, in sternly unambiguous language, he warned dictator Bashar al-Assad a red line would be crossed if ever biological weapons were moved, let alone unleashed on the Syrian people.

Yet, even before last week’s horrific massacre that probably took at least several hundred lives, Obama knew the Demon of Damascus had already employed his chemical arsenal to lethal effect more than once.

And, though, as yet, there isn’t incontestable proof Assad wasn’t embolden to repeat the war crime on a far grander scale, the finger of suspicion points inexorably in his direction.

However, there are caveats. Aided by Iranian Republican Guards and Hezbollah cutthroats, government forces are reportedly crushing the opposition. And, with UN arms inspectors in town to check the scenes of earlier gassing incidents, it’s a questionable moment to re-deploy deadly nerve agents.

Contrarily, maybe in his Machiavellian mindset, Assad is counting on the swirling fog of civil war to cloud culpability and/or deliberately tweak Obama’s nose, knowing his allies, Russia and China, will parry any UN censure.

They did exactly that last Wednesday, rendering a Security Council statement gutless. However, in the light of international condemnation, Russia has been forced to back calls for a probe, even if Vladimir Putin still insists his pet tyrant isn’t the guilty party.

A MOTHER MOURNS: Many of the victims of the recent gassing in Syria were children

And it is not outside the realm of possibility that the motley rebels – especially battle-hardened jihadis, sprinkled with Al-Qaeda affiliates – concocted a ‘false flag’ black op to smear the Assad regime, not that it any needs help in cloaking itself in further opprobrium.

But, if Obama drew a red line in the Syrian sand and someone took this as a green light to act in gross defiance, what price the warning from the leader of the free world?

All we’ve heard is Obama has – finally! – asked his generals to ‘provide all options for all contingencies’, as he views the worsening situation with ‘grave concern.’

Understandably, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the West doesn’t want any more complicated adventures on Muslim soil or another gung-ho president in the mould of G. ‘Dubya’ Bush.

Yet, after seeing the hope that began as the Arab Spring lurch into an Islamic Winter and now serial slaughter, what is not required is a vacillating, over-conciliatory, moralising poseur, who talks the talk but patently fails to walk the walk.

And, while Obama may be the coolest dude to occupy the Oval Office, for all his theatrical gravitas, he’s in danger of becoming the lamest duck President since bumbling Jimmy Carter, which takes some underachieving.

He signalled this potentiality from the very start of his first term in office, when his initial foray overseas was to Cairo, where he made a grovelling speech, which the Arab world predictably scoffed at.

Since then, where Middle East matters are concerned, Obama has rarely put a foot right.

Admittedly, his options with Syria are now limited, particularly since he muffed the chance to be effectual a year ago, before the conflict became the magnet for every turbaned headbanger with an AK47 to hitch a camel-ride and join the carnage.

That lost window of opportunity would have afforded the West the chance to supply the then mainly moderate rebels at least with light arms plus anti-tank ordnance and prod the bunglers of the Arab League into helping clean up a mess in their own back yard.

MUFFED IT: Obama misses a putt during a golf game, just as he muffed the chance to sort out Syria

Instead, like the legal geek he is, Obama navel-gazed, preferring to wag a reproving finger at Bashar The Basher and mutter darkly about ‘red lines’.

Well, one way or another, they have been crossed and, as the US Commander In Chief huffs and puffs, Vladimir Putin unfailingly delivers macho support to the Assad mafia, however disingenuous Russia’s morally-bankrupt motives are.

Britain and France, meanwhile, seem up to the challenge of trying to stop the Syrian madness escalating into a mini-holocaust – the death-count is already beyond 100,000 and largely composed of innocent civilians, many of them children – though UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, doesn’t specify what sort of intervention he has in mind.

It might mean establishing no-fly zones to checkmate Assad’s MIGs or bombing his missile batteries, as the RAF and French air force did to help oust Muammar Gaddafi in Libya; conversely, it could involve selectively arming rebels, but ensuring weaponry doesn’t reach those seeking to impose an anti-Western, Sharia paradise on Syria; or it may mean diplomatically arm-twisting Russia and China to bring Assad to the peace talks table.

It should not mean, as Hague and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, have been at pains to stress, Western troops on the ground.

But at least they are talking robustly in a test for the West inflicted by the rhetoric of an American leader, who, so far, seems to display no real stomach for a fight.

So I suggest Obama recalls what he said on August 20, 2012, and, if he doesn’t, here’s a reminder:-

‘We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.’

Now the world waits with mounting urgency to hear what the President’s solution is, before droves more innocents die in Syria.

If something positive isn’t quickly forthcoming, I suggest Obama pops into the White House kitchen, butter two slices of bread, insert his words in between and eats them.

Time to show true grit and take on the Islamic fanatics, Mr. President

If a PR man was to invent the template for a ‘designer’ US President, Barak Hussein Obama would be it – young, educated, slickly televisual, a snappy dresser, head of a model family, ethnically mixed race and a self-made politico.

In 2008 a majority of Americans bought into that vision and his battle anthem, ‘Change’.

Well, they (and the rest of the world) got change, all right – mostly for the worse. And, but for his Republican challenger Mitt Romney being relentlessly smeared as ‘gaffe-prone’ by the liberal media, Obama would be staring down the barrel of defeat in November, consigned to history’s wastebin as the US’s second worst, post-WW2 leader after the serially incompetent Jimmy Carter.

For, like Carter, he shares common flaws, notably a lack of substance and true grit, which no amount of posturing can paper over.

The peanut farmer from Georgia was undone by his monumental cock-up over the Iran Hostages crisis and ham-handed stewardship of the economy; Obama deserves to fall over his grovelling appeasement to Muslim fanaticism and his lack of economic nous.

It’s worthwhile remembering Carter’s dead hand on the helm of the USA and especially how, for 444 days – from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 – 52 Americans were held hostage by Islamo-fascists in their embassy in Tehran.

With inept efforts at diplomacy floundering on the rock of hard-line Iranian obduracy, Carter was forced to order a rescue attempt. Codenamed Operation Eagle Caw, on April 24, 1980, it failed abysmally, resulting in the deaths of eight US servicemen.

LOST FOR WORDS: Like Carter, Obama’s forign policy is littered with flaws

Interestingly, the hostages were released just minutes after a new, hawkish president called Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

Now, such are the lost lessons of history, we’re witnessing something approaching a reprise of 31 years ago.

A US President, whose first foreign policy act was to rush to Cairo and offer the hand of friendship to the Muslim world – only to have his palm spat on – continues bumbling and stumbling into an Islamic extremists’ trap he’s too blinkered to see.

The case of the inane movie mocking Mohammad (I take it I can still mention the Prophet by name without provoking more maniacal fury?) made by Christian Copts in California was the fuse that lit explosives begging to be detonate across the Islamic East…and Obama’s response: a cringing telly ad, apologising for the controversial video and insisting it was none of his doing.

As with his witless predecessor Carter, Obama cannot get it through his greying head that the fanatics who have hijacked the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ are ratching up the anti-Western ante now that the bit is between their teeth.

As many commentators (including this one) warned, the kids and cosmopolitan middle-classes who led the demos for an end to tyranny with cries for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia have been blindsided by repressive parties, intent on heralding an ‘Islamic Winter’.

Grasping and repugnant as Mubarak was in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia, they maintained a cold peace with the West, as did the lunatic Gaddafi in Libya, which – with British and French help, subcontracted by the USA – has now disintegrated into factionalist conflict.

In regard to Syria’s civil war, the Americans can’t tell which way is up. We all know the Assads ran the country as a family fiefdom from 1971. But Washington hasn’t a clue who the ‘rebels’ are or to what extent they’re under Al Qaeda’s influence.

Tack onto all this the repeatedly bellicose rants by the Iranians to annihilate Israel and the Jewish state’s understandable impatience at Obama’s dithering after a decade of Tehran’s lies over its nuclear ambitions – the boss of Iran’s atomic programme, Fereydoun Abbasi, recently admitted he gave International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors false information – and you can tell how utterly flawed US foreign policy is.

FLOORMAT FLAG: Islamic fanatics desecrate the Stars & Stripes

What the Obama administration doesn’t get (and Romney does) is that as much as Muslim nations crave US hand-outs, especially weapons, they don’t want any Crusader influence over their masses and they’ll attempt to humiliate the West at the drop of a kaffiyeh.

What they also demand is absolute respect towards their unyielding faith – Islam means ‘submission’ and, by their book, that should extend to infidels like us, too. But with them respect is a one-way street: Christians will continue to be reviled in many Muslim states, women will be denigrated, homosexuals persecuted and daily dollops of vicious, anti-Semitic bile will continue to spew from government-controlled media.

So sometime soon (urgently, I hope) during his predicted second term in office – sadly, I think Obama will shade it over Romney – the 44^th President must find some balls, stop being the pushover Islamists view him as and tell them a few hard facts about civilised Western values. Because we’ve got plenty to be proud of and he shouldn’t mince his words.

Our ancestors fought long and hard for liberty and the rights we enjoy – freedom of speech, a free Press, a division between church and state, an end to absolute monarchy, just laws that don’t discriminate, an independent judiciary, fair elections, respect for minorities, et al – and it’s time all religious fanatics learned we are not prepared to compromise our principles.

They should also understand we prefer being here, not in the hereafter.

Obama might not like the responsibility of being the world’s most powerful man and has said almost as much. But, if he didn’t want that obligation, he shouldn’t be standing again for office.

He’s stuck with it and we’re likely to be stuck with him for a further four years.

Taking out Osama Bin Laden – said to be at the instigation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his Joint Chiefs of Staff – wasn’t sufficient evidence for Obama to convince the West he’s prepared to get his manicured fingers dirty.

So I urge Mr. President to stop vacillating, concentrate less on reducing his golf handicap and recognise the stark truth: so far as the hard-liners in the Muslim world are concerned, they think he’s a weakling and their attitude is not going to change, only harden.

Meanwhile, the lands of the free demand and deserve a US leader who is brave enough to stand up to them and any likeminded bullies.

The mystery behind the movie that set the Muslim world aflame – and its impact on the US election

There’s a fog of ambiguity growing ever thicker behind the murders of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three diplomatic colleagues when their consulate in Benghazi was overrun and destroyed three days ago.

The fuse that ignited the attack – and sparked the all-too-predictable, viciously anti-Western mayhem across much of the Muslim world, which will no doubt continue unfettered for some time – was a tacky, tasteless film, entitled ‘The Innocence of Islam’, mocking the prophet Muhammad.

Originally, it was touted as being the handiwork of an ‘Israeli-American’ called ‘Sam Bacile’ (imbecile more like it) until the Associated Press  tracked him down to southern California and revealed his likely true identity – Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted fraudster.

The man appears to be a 55-year-old Egyptian Coptic Christian rather than an American-Israeli, as wrongly claimed in earlier reports. And, according to The Atlantic magazine, a ‘consultant’ working on the project confirmed Bacile was a pseudonym and not an Israeli.

If this proves correct, the devious motives of Nakoula/’Bacile’ could be interpreted as those of a dangerous maverick agent provocateur, seeking to discredit one religion and lay blame on another.

A 14-minute trailer of the movie – reminscent of the controversial cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in 2006 – is reported to have been posted on YouTube in June. Yet it has taken two months for incandescent rage to be whipped up and the shoddy, shamateurish film’s provenance to be investigated.

One fact is telling about the date of the storming of the US legation in Libya, the killings of Ambassador Stevens and subsequent outrage that exploded across Muslim lands: it happened on 9/11 and the 11^th anniversary of the mass slaughter in 2001 of over 3,000 innocent civilians on American soil.

DESTRUCTION DERBY: Rioters attacking the American embassy in Yemen

Small wonder then that intelligence sources believe the seminal date is no coincidence. And the angry, spontaneous protests, they say, were no such thing, but carefully pre-orchestrated demos, inspired by Islamo-fascist extremists to celebrate the anniversary of the dastardly attacks, hailed by many in the East as a victory over the West.

The response to the blasphemous movie also calls into doubt President Obama’s policy of appeasement towards the Muslim world at a crucial moment when he bids for re-election.

Many Americans – Democrats as well as Republicans and the vacillating undecided – aren’t convinced the words of rapprochement of the Obama administration are worth the paper they’re written on and wonder whether their first black leader is a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter, arguably the worst President elected since World War Two.

Carter’s one-term presidency was torpedoed by his dithering over the 1979-1981 Iran hostages scandal, how to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and his mismanagement of the economy, when the country was suffering from ‘stagflation’, in which inflation was high, growth low and unemployment soaring (sound familiar?).

Like Carter, despite his slick rhetoric, Obama displays all the hallmarks of being too soft on America’s foes and failing to master a flagging economy.

Although still marginally ahead of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in the polls – and lucky he’s not facing as formidable a challenger as Ronald Reagan was for the inept Carter – seismic incidents, like the slaughter of US diplomats abroad and sustained attacks against American missions in the tinderbox of the Middle East, could blow him off course.

Obama has two months to right the ship of state, but as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once tellingly observed, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’