Denis McDonough, U.S. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, gave the Keynote Address at J Street’s fifth annual conference.
J Street was created to be “Obama’s blocking back” as he and it seek to bludgeon Israel into creating a Palestinian State immediately if not sooner, claiming that unless that happens, Israel cannot remain both a Jewish and a democratic state.
McDONOUGH’S CONNECTIONS TO BENGHAZI COVER-UP AND SOROS THINK TANK
What has largely been ignored is the connection between this chief of staff and one of the greatest catastrophes of the first Obama administration.
During the fall of 2012, a mob later revealed to be al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists took over an American mission in Benghazi, Libya and murdered four Americans, including the American Ambassador Chris Stevens. Initial reports crafted by the administration blamed a low quality video critical of Muhammad for the “demonstration” that “got out of hand.”
At the time of the Benghazi debacle, the current chief of staff was the Deputy National Security Advisor. It was to him and the other three members of what is called the National Security Council Deputies Committee, that the House Intelligence Committee traced the changes in the infamous “talking points” to minimize the fact that terrorists and not simply an outraged crowd of Muslims responding to a low-budget video, “The Innocence of Muslims” was behind the attacks on the American outposts in Benghazi.
Of the four members of the Deputies Committee, McDonough was the one who most vociferously and publicly condemned the “truly abhorrent video.”
Other than being Obama’s chief of staff and a former deputy national security advisor, who is Denis McDonough? Prior to his positions in the executive branch, MdDonough did a stint at the George Soros-created Center for American Progress. Who else was integral to the creation of CAP? Morton Halperin, who was also a co-creator and is now the chair of J Street’s board of directors.
Back to this year’s J Street Conference.
McDonough spoke on Monday, March 23, about the accomplishments of Team Obama over the past six years. McDonough knew full well he was speaking to a crowd that fervently embraces many of those changes.
McDonough has long been extremely close with Obama. The chief of staff channeled his boss by chiding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a statement made just before last week’s election in Israel.
McDonough verbally glared at Netanyahu for audaciously suggesting that the present was not the right time to create a Palestinian State in the Middle East. Netanyahu had gone even one step further and said that the creation of such a state at any time in the near future would be not just unwise but calamitous, given the ever-expanding presence of radical Islamic organizations such as ISIS, which have been consolidating power and asserting control over weak governments in the region.
The nerve of Netanyahu to rely on his own assessments of what would be catastrophic for the Middle East rather than accept the U.S. administration’s view of how things should go down in the region, especially given this administration’s foreign policy track record over the past six years: Iran’s Green Party, Egypt’s Mubarak, then Egypt’s Morsi, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, the re-set with Russia, ISIS, Yemen and a host of others.
But McDonough knew he was in friendly territory at the J Street Conference and knew there would be a warm reception for an attack on Netanyahu for daring to say out loud that it was unwise to create a Palestinian State now.
“That is why the Prime Minister’s comments on the eve of the election – in which he first intimated and then made very clear in a response to a follow up question that a Palestinian state will not be established while he is prime minister – were so troubling,” McDonough said.