Chaim Witz -- who most people know as the fire-breathing, blood-spitting, bassist of the rock group KISS -- is outspoken. To say the least.
Whether it's money, music or women, Simmons has an opinion. And he comes about each opinion through experience. You see, unlike most celebs, he doesn't talk out of his hat. Even if you disagree with his viewpoint, he at least came about it honestly (not because someone told him it was the "cool" or "expected" thing to do).
Gene Simmons' KISS persona...
Which is why the clip below is worth watching. Simmons, a native of Israel and the son of a Holocaust survivor, has some harsh words for President Barack Obama's newly voiced declaration that the Jewish state needs to return land to enemies who waged war on Israel and lost territory (which Israel has kept as a security buffer).
In the CNBC interview (below), Simmons -- a former Obama supporter -- explains why Obama's speech was reckless and unworkable.
JANE WELLS, CNBC:What do you think of President Obama’s suggestion that the borders be redrawn pre-67?
GENE SIMMONS, KISS:President Obama, I voted for an idea. What I didn’t realize what I was getting was an idealist. If you’ve never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon. You have no f—king idea what it’s like on the moon. For a president to be sitting in Washington, D.C., and saying, “Go back to your 67 borders in Israel,” how about you live there and try to defend an indefensible border nine miles wide? On one side you’ve got hundreds of millions of people who hate your guts, on the other side you’ve got the Mediterranean. Unless you control, in Israel, unless you control those Golan Heights, it’s an indefensible position. It’s a nice idea, when you grow up you find out that life isn’t the way you imagined it, and President Obama means well. I think he’s actually a good guy. He has no f—king idea what the world is like because he doesn’t have to live there.
Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama attempted to lay a new course when it comes to Middle East policy.
By most accounts, his speech -- which was obviously written with the idea in mind that it would be a "watershed" moment in his presidency -- failed.
Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House to speak with his American counterpart.
Only Netanyahu didn't just speak with him...he spoke to him...it was more like "instructed" him in the realities of Middle East history and policy.
Benajamin Netanyahu (left) explains reality to Barack Obama...
ABC News' Jake Tapper was at the White House and he filed this report:
In Oval Office, Bibi Offers History Lessons to Obama
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to think he needed to educate President Obama on some issues today, so in the Oval Office he described in some detail to the president a history of the refugee problem in the region dating back 63 years, as well as his view on the need for Israel to be able to defend itself in the context of thousands of years of Jewish suffering.
“We don't have a lot of margin for error,” Netanyahu said to the president. “Because, Mr. President, history will not give the Jewish people another chance.”
Netanyahu, whose father is a retired academic, offered the president repeated history lessons, saying Jews have “been around for almost 4,000 years. We have experienced struggle and suffering like no other people. We've gone through expulsions and pogroms and massacres and the murder of millions. But I can say that even at the dearth of -- even at the nadir of the valley of death, we never lost hope and we never lost our dream of reestablishing a sovereign state in our ancient homeland, the land of Israel.”
Yesterday, President Obama angered Netanyahu by -- for the first time -- stating as a matter of U.S. policy that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
"Netanyahu shows no signs of budging on deal": At a White House meeting with the president today, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that his country would not withdraw to 1967 boundaries to help make way for an adjacent Palestinian state, which Barack Obama had urged Israel to do in a speech yesterday.
The saga of the White House party crashing couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who met President Barack Obama in a receiving line at last week's state dinner continues…to grow.
Yesterday, Canada Free Press, shed light on the wannabe reality TV stars and the fact that this wasn’t the first time they’d met Mr. Obama. From the news site: “...[below] here’s Obama, the senator flashing his pearly whites with Randy Jackson, better known as a judge on American Idol. Others pictured are Black Eyed Peas Rock Band; Tareq Salahi the President of the America’s Polo Cup; President Elect Obama, Fergie from Black eyed Peas and Michaele Salahi, posing this time as a former Miss USA and Supermodel. Interesting little detail for White House [Secret Service] gumshoes: As the photo was published in June 2005, Barack Obama was still Senator Obama and not the President Elect.”
The gate crashers and the prez-to-be...four years ago...
The story gets a bit more interesting, doesn’t it?
But as they say on those late night TV infomercials: “THAT’S NOT ALL!”
In fact, this is just sort of the beginning.
You see, Mr. Salahi and Mr. Obama are tied in another way.
The common link between the two partiers is Rashid Khalidi, a pro-Palestinian Columbia University professor, an apologist for terrorism and a well-known member of the anti-Israel lobby here in the U.S. (And before the spin cycle kicks in – particularly from the White House – you should know that Professor Khalidi has been closely associated with Obama.)
Mr. Salahi is connected to Khalidi through his service on the board of the American Task Force for Palestine, where Khalidi served as vice president. (Since news of the Salahis’ gate crashing, both men’s names have been scrubbed from the ATFP’s website. Salahi's bio, however, still appears on a Google cache search of the site.) h/t: WND
Rashid Khalidi...
A little background on the ATFP and Khalidi:
·ATFP lobbies for a Palestinian state.
·Its demands include a “right of return for Palestinian refugees,” which would flood Israel with a tidal wave of Palestinians who would effectively destroy the Jewish state “by population.”
·Khalidi is an outspoken critic of Israel.
·He is the former Director of the PLO’s press agency and onetime moderator of the PLO Advisory Committee.
·Khalidi made numerous statements supportive of Palestinian terror and he reportedly worked on behalf of the PLO while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism (during which time it was labeled by the State Department as a terror group).
·Obama reportedly became friends with Khalidi when the two worked together at the University of Chicago (records show Khalidi lectured at the university 2003, while Obama taught law there from 1993 to 2004). Khalidi also worked as one of Obama’s top fundraisers during Obama’s unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2000.
According to WND, “Obama also sat on the board of the Woods Fund, which in 2001 provided a $40,000 grant to Mona Khalidi's Arab American Action Network, or AAAN. The fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002. Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit titled "The Subject of Palestine" that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the ‘Nakba,’ or ‘catastrophe’ of Israel's founding in 1948. In 2003, Obama delivered an in-person testimonial for Khalidi, who at the time was departing the University of Chicago for a new teaching position at Columbia University in New York. At the 2003 event, poetry reportedly was read comparing Israelis to Osama bin Laden and accusing the Jewish state of terrorism.”
A photo purporting to show the Obamas and the Khalidis at a fundraising dinner. Were the men kibitzing about kibbutzim?
But back to “Crashgate”…
For the time being, the Secret Service is falling on its sword and taking the blame for the Salahis’ sashaying along the red carpet. The couple's attorney has declined to comment, though “an American TV executive says the couple that crashed President Obama's first state dinner is now offering to talk to broadcast networks about it - providing they're well paid”...like something in the neighborhood of $500 thousand. In an e-mail to Bloomberg News, [their attorney] added, "My clients were cleared by the White House to be there."
And why wouldn’t they be? After all, they've got friends...
Samantha Appleton/The White House In a photo released by the White House, President Obama greeted Michaele and Tareq Salahi, right, at his first state dinner on Tuesday. (h/t: NYT)
Tens of thousands of American Service Members are deployed in hostile and remote regions of the world, including the Middle East, Afghanistan, and on ships throughout international waters. The physical conditions they must endure are difficult and they may be separated from loved ones for long periods of time.Operation Gratitude seeks to lift morale and put smiles on faces by sending care packages addressed to individual Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines deployed in harm's way.** Operation Gratitude care packages contain food, hygiene products, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation, all wrapped with good wishes of love and support.
Through Collection Drives, Letter Writing Campaigns and Donations of funds for shipping expenses, Operation Gratitudeprovides civilians anywhere in America a way to express their respect and appreciation to the men and women of the U.S. Military in an active, hands-on manner.
Learn more - and help out - by visiting Operation Gratitude's website!
