We're a little over an hour away from this week's Omri Ceren Show, courtesy of One Jerusalem Radio. This week's episode - to which you can tune in live via either the main show page or the episode page - will revolve around Obama's ongoing diplomatic broadside against Israel. Since it's already paying dividends in the form of maximalist Palestinian demands backed by riotous Palestinian violence, we might as well discuss the overwhelming evidence that it was obviously premeditated and blisteringly hypocritical. That it will also set the peace process back by boxing in Abbas - again - is probably also worth mentioning. As always the decision-making process is as important as the decision, since apparently the people advising the President are either being ignored out of pique or being listened to out of ignorance.

On the TOCS technical/housekeeping side: I'm slowly getting caught up on remastering old episodes and working through old interviews. I've eliminated much of the choppiness from the first month of episodes, which you can now revisit here. The full 38 minute interview with Larry Greenfield, highlights of which aired last week, is now available on the One Jerusalem Audio page. Look out in the coming weeks for more reedited old episodes and more full versions of past interviews.

Anyway, today's official blurb:

Omri covers the Obama administration's diplomatic broadside against Israel. From Biden's initial "condemnation" over a minor mishap to Clinton's aggressive tirade against Netanyahu - to President Obama's personal orders to do both - the last week has brought the US-Israeli special relationship to the breaking point. Meanwhile anti-Israel partisans have unleashed a flurry of articles insisting that the US should scale back its support for Israel, some adopting almost classically antisemitic terms. Dan Diker calls in to provide an insider perspective on how the Israeli government is working to repair the crisis and minimize its damage.

All in all this hasn't been the best week the US-Israeli special relationship. But at least the crisis wasn't all totally predictable during the campaign!

References:
* Double Standards And Non-Standards [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Crisis [Halevi / TNR]
* Compare And Contrast: Israeli And Syrian "Insults" To Clinton [MR]
* Maybe Obama Deserved That Nobel Peace Prize After All [MR]
* Confirmed: US-Israeli Alliance Plummets Into "Historic Crisis," Obama Triggers Worst Relations Since Carter [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Jewish Politics
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy

We're a couple hours away from today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. With Mitchell and Biden on the ground the show is going to be extremely diplomacy-heavy, making allowances for the time needed to cover this-week-in-Iranian-warmongering. You can tune in live via the show page or the episode page starting at 6:30pm PST, and as always I'll have the chatroom and the phone lines open for questions and comments.

There are functionally two full interviews this week. Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation, comes on as a special guest to talk about "Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood," the enormous writeup he just completed on the recent Jerusalem Conference. Given his role in conservative and Jewish politics - the Obama campaign banned surrogates from debating him when he was head of the California RJC and then NJDC moron Aaron Kayek targeted him in one of the dumbest attacks I've ever read - that comes up too.

Today's Diker segment goes for almost 20 minutes, which is what you'd expect given that the show topic is diplomacy and he's among Israel's top diplomacy analysts. One of the money lines from the beginning of the conversation: "we haven't seen this type of sympathy by an American administration... really since Carter, and even the Carter administration was somewhat more measured in its approach." Cf. the rest of the Israeli political world, where that exact conclusion is on its way to becoming conventional wisdom. You'll want to stay till the end where he evaluates whether Obama will actually succeed in detonating the US-Israel alliance. Tough to say, tough to say.

Official show blurb:

Omri interviews Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. They discuss Greenfield's recent missile defense talk at the 7th Annual Jerusalem Conference, the political climate in Israel and within American Jewry, and the future of the US conservative movement. Dan Diker also joins the show, talking about Israel's recent public and state-to-state diplomacy in the context of the Iranian threat. In between Omri runs down the week's news on global terrorism, Middle East geopolitics, and the left's Big Government push in the United States.

I'm also in the process of going over all the old shows and reediting them to make them listenable (or at least to remove cracks and pops - any unlistenable content will, alas, stay the way it is). More on that in the next week or so. In the meantime, see you in a bit.

References:
* Jerusalem's Misgivings with Larry Greenfield [TOCS]
* Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood [Larry Greenfield]
* Obama Campaign Demands Ban On Republican Jewish Group, Escalates Thuggish Intimidation [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* Politics: Not afraid to speak her mind [JPost]
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Jewish Politics

We're just a few hours from this week's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, both the most technologically solid and the most cheerfully optimistic radio on the Internet. Tonight's show will focus on one of the more popular anti-Israel taglines, the apartheid smear that's become a leftist mainstay and a Spanish schoolyard blood libel. It's Israel Apartheid Week around the world - they've even got a Wiki entry - so we might as well talk about it. As always you can head over to the episode page or the show page, and from there you'll be able to hear the show, participate in the chat room, or call in live. Today's official blurb:

Omri discusses the global anti-Jewish bigotry and anti-Israel media bias that plays on the "apartheid" smear. From campuses like the University of California Irvine, where Muslim students stand in the center of campus and militantly chant anti-Zionist slogans, to Spanish schoolhouses where children are instructed to send antisemitic postcards to Israelis - the most venomous and explicitly genocidal blood libel is quite simply mainstream in Western educational institutions. Dan Diker calls in to provide the broader week-in-geopolitics, focusing as always on Middle East dynamics and their international consequences.

As always the top of the show will include a rundown of what's going on with Iran, including this Obama walkback on the content of sanctions and this Obama walkback on the timing of sanctions. It seems like there are only three options: this administration really thought Iran would respond positively to engagement, this administration really expected China and Russia to hop on board a workable sanctions regime, or this administration really wants Iran to get nukes. So either they're idiots or they're idiots or they're trying to detonate US hegemony in the oil-soaked Middle East. Not to ruin the ending, but they're idiots.

Since the world doesn't stop turning for anti-Jewish Western academics and teachers - no matter how much they'd prefer otherwise - Dan Diker will indeed join the show to discuss diplomacy and geopolitics. Hopefully this week we can get through the updates without the Blog Talk Radio soundboard dying. Fingers crossed.

References:
* Israel angry over anti-Semitic postcards sent by Spanish schoolchildren [Telegraph]
* The Apartheid Libel [One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show]
* Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched? [Official Site]
* Obama Giving Up On "Crippling" Iran Sanctions [MR]
* Clinton appears to extend timeline for Iran sanctions [YNet]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* European Antisemitism
* Academia

We're mere minutes away from tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, which will focus mostly on the Al-Mabhouh liquidation and its consequences. Media reports have been filled with "analysis" of Israel is coping with an operation that was disastrous on multiple levels. Nobody's really sure exactly what those levels were - and as of today Israel has yet to be officially condemned by anybody that anybody else cares about - but they're obviously there. Because why would international media outlets be writing about them if they didn't actually exist?

So we'll be discussing that for most of the evening, and you can tune in live to ask questions via phone and chatroom, or just pick up the podcast afterward.

Contrary to the preferences of anti-Israel partisans, though, the world doesn't actually stop while they manufacture their petty little anti-Israel tempests in their teacups. Dan Diker will be on for an update on the peace process, kicking off with France's recent stunt and getting into its effects on everything from internal Palestinian politiking to EU/Sunni relations. The second segment gets into the prospects for renewed Israeli/Syrian talks, how they have the potential to threaten Israel, and which are apparently again a thing. And since this still exists there will be the usual overview of Iran at the top of the show.

Other than that, it'll be the usual optimistic mix of great news and sanguine predictions.

References:
* Diplomatic own goals by Israel have set alarm bells ringing [FT]
* Syria urges EU to back Turkish role in peace process [Press TV]
* France wants Middle East peace talks kick-start: PM [Reuters]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israeli-Arab Peace Process
* Anti-Israel Journalism

Old CW: the Middle East is "everybody vs. Israel." New CW, for at least some people at least for some of the time: the Middle East is "Israel and US-backed Arab states vs. Iran and its state and non-state proxies." Much less pithy, and - for a bunch of reasons - orders of magnitude less straightforward. We can start with the central problem, which is that no one knows whether it really is the new geopolitical situation. After that's resolved there are questions of how stable the redrawn map is, to what degree Sunni antisemitism influences their thinking, whether nation-state calculations pushing Arab countries into the Iranian orbit are outweighed by sectarian antipathy for Shiites, and so on.

Ergo tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, on the Sunni/Shiite rift and its consequences. Last week was handed over to the intentions and capabilities of Israel's Iran-backed enemies. This week we'll do the other side of the divide. As always you can tune in live to ask questions via phone and chatroom, or just pick up the podcast afterward.

Rounding out the geopolitics stuff - Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq if we get to it - I'll also have a segment on the hit that the Mossad may or may not have carried out in Dubai. It's relevant because the vigor with which Dubai is conducting their investigation is tied to their suspicions of Hamas. It's also kind of awesome.

Harold Rhode - senior Hudson Institute advisor, former Middle East and Islamic World analyst in Rumsfeld's Defense Department, decades-long Pentagon specialist, etc - makes a brief appearance via phone. He gives his evaluation on the odds that Sunni/Shiite tensions might solidify some kind of Israeli/Sunni pact. Teaser: not great.

As always Dan Diker joins the show from Israel. He's got a broad overview on the topic - one of many on which he's counted an expert - plus a bunch of specific details. In fact here he is interviewing Bernard Lewis on "The Sunni-Shiite Split and the Iranian Threat" at the just-concluded Jerusalem Conference. Keep in mind that Lewis arguably the greatest Orientalist alive and look out for the line "there is a scenario for the end of time... [and] in the view of a certain section within the Iranian leadership... that time is now." Sweet dreams!

That and more in a few hours.

References:
* The Erstwhile Sunni/Shiite Rift [Omri Ceren Show]
* Israeli security officials convinced Mossad behind Dubai slaying [AP]
* Israel: No reason to think Mossad killed Hamas man [AP]
* The Sunni-Shiite Split and the Iranian Threat [JCPA]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Political Islam
* Arab and Muslim World

Stan Shivell and I have been IM'ing back and forth about what Iran's February 11 saber rattling. is all about. It's the 31st anniversary of the Islamic takeover and both the government and the opposition will be out in force. But there's also this other element - and the Iranians do this periodically - where they attach some kind of mystical significance to a day and predict "surprises" and "demises" and so on. Probably as good a time as any to look at how a regional war between Israel and Iran might play out.

Ergo today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, going on the air at 6:30pm. As always you can tune in live via either the episode page or the main Omri Ceren Show page. Chat room available, phone lines open, etc. Segments in the queue: the calculations and capabilities of Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Egypt. This crap about Apaches will also come up. I've been trying to chase the story down a little bit and it turns out to be pointedly different than original press reports implied.

Dan Diker joins the show for three full segments today. We'll go over the specifics of recent Israeli/Syrian relations before moving into how the Syrian military would get dragged into a regional war. Even measured by the amount of game Diker usually brings to these discussions, there's just a ton of information in each section. Two specific things for which to keep an ear out: the significance of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal specifically in the context of peace talks and the degree to which Iran can impose its will on Damascus's behavior.

References:
* Clenched With A Weird Feb 11th Deadline For The "Demise Of Capitalism" And America [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* What Would A Middle East War Look Like? [One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show]
* Wonderful: Obama Blocking Apache Sales To Israel, "Dismayed" At Use During Cast Lead [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Syria
* Iran

Note the time change. We're going on the air 30 minutes early today for scheduling reasons, which gives you just enough time to get comfortable and tune in. Everything else - from where you can find the show to the structure of the segments - should be familiar. You can listen live either via the main Omri Ceren Show page or through the page for today's episode. As always the phone lines will be open and the chat room will be available for questions and comments.

The bulk of today's program revolves around anti-Israel media bias and propaganda. You'd think being the global leader on Haiti would be a public diplomacy boon, but it turns out not so much. Ditto for investigating alleged IDF misdeeds. Ditto for trying to make concessions to West Bank Palestinians. Ditto for minimizing Hamas's exploitation for human shields in Gaza. Instead those either become reasons to attack Israel or - at the very least - they embolden anti-Israel partisans by signaling uncertainty and weakness.

Today's Diker segments deal specifically with the two controversial Israeli investigations into Cast Lead. The first investigation is the one that the IDF just concluded, with its results being handed over to the UN. The second probe is the one that Netanyahu is considering, which would involve another huge and hostile inquiry into the behavior of Israeli soldiers operating under almost impossible conditions. There's a point during the second part of today's interview that's pretty much required listening, where Diker very calmly and very systematically explains the precise degree to which another investigation would be a total disaster.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Incoherent Success [Omri Ceren Show]
* Israel to UN: We launched 150 investigations following Gaza op [YNet]
* Israel 'war crime' probe urged [The Age]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Cast Lead

Given that the State of the Union is the worst political ritual evuh - to say nothing of tonight's likely content - we figure you'll be wanting an alternative about 30 minutes after Jesus Cicero starts talking. Ergo tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, which will be kicking off at exactly 6:30pm PST / 9:30 EST. You can tune in live to call in, participate in the chat room, or just listen.

The only caveat is that I'll be playing my own version of the SOTU drinking game for the half-hour before the show, where instead of looking for specific phrases like "let me be clear" or "make no mistake" I just take a shot whenever Obama is obnoxiously condescending. Odds of tonight's show happening at all: middling.

More seriously, segments in the queue: health care, the administration's latest Iran spin, and whatever had happened in the SOTU as of 6:30pm. The WH just sent out an email preview, promising that Obama will detail - among other things - how he has "restored America's alliances and standing in the world... [and] restored our standing and leadership around the world." Since that's the opposite of true in Latin America and Britain and Eastern Europe and China and Russia and Israel and Japan, I'm really interested to know what he's going to say.

Dan Diker will join the show, as he always does, to lend a note of actual expertise. This week he'll be talking about Fatah/Hamas tensions, which have now reached the point where the PA is asking the EU not to engage their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza. On the international stage Hamas is playing the old game where they say one thing to the West and then another in Arabic. Meanwhile there are signs that Fatah is playing an even more brazen double-game, accepting US security assistance while seeking rapprochement with Iran. Dan picks those controversies apart, explaining what's going on beneath the surface across various Palestinian factions and sub-factions.

References and related after the jump...

I'm finally back in One Jerusalem Radio's Los Angeles studios, which you'd think would enhance the technical side of tonight's broadcast. Unfortunately there's a gigantic storm tearing apart the city - editing out the thunderclaps from the prerecorded interview with Lee Smith was a singular pleasure - so the studio might well be blacked out. If we do have electricity the show will go live as planned at 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST. You can tune in live to call in, hang out in the chat room, or just listen.

Huge show today. Lee Smith shows up to talk about his new book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. About halfway through I ask him about why liberal foreign policy experts get to just imagine the Middle East as they'd want it to be rather than as the cluster of warring tribes that it actually is. The conversation before and after goes into the precise level of disaster that can be expected, given that the WH seems bent on indulging in exactly those kinds of pseudo-sophisticated fantasies.

Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel to talk about Israel's efforts in Haiti, making the case that Israel's global leadership on disaster relief - coupled with a public diplomacy push on Twitter and YouTube - can't help but bolster the Jewish State's image. I'll be making my usual point that antisemites are simply too antisemitic - and have too many media enablers - for public diplomacy to make much of a dent. I obviously think I'm on the right side of that debate but Dan has "data" and "arguments," so take from that what you will.

References:
* The Pseudo-Sophisticated Horse - Lee Smith, Dan Diker [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith [Amazon]
* What Is the Arab World's Problem? [Lee Smith]
* ISRAEL: Sending soldiers of peace to Haiti [LAT]
* Israel builds a field hospital in Haiti. Anti-Zionists not fooled! [Gutmann / Telegraph]
* Haiti: An Israeli Public Relations Moment? [MediaLine]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy
* Foreign Policy Experts

I'll be broadcasting One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show live from London at 2:30am this morning, putting us in the show's normal 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST time slot. After that I get to fly back to Los Angeles, with all the accompanying normal broadcast times and 40 degree temperature bumps that the trip promises.

I've been assured that the tech connectivity problems - the ones that made last week's show cut in and out - have been fixed. That means you'll be able to listen and participate in realtime as you normally would via either the episode page or the show page. Afterward I'll download and remaster any old choppy episodes, reupload everything, and post a notice.

In the meantime tonight's show promises to be a particularly timely one. Dan Diker's must-read 6,000 word article unpacking the Palestinians' unilateral strategy - which he'll be previewing and contextualizing tonight - just went live a little while ago:

The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" contains several major implications for Israel. First, the Palestinian delegitimization of Israel in the interim poses a strategic threat. The Palestinian state-building process has succeeded in painting Israel as a pariah state, while the hidden foreign policy agenda of the PA and PLO leaderships is to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. Although unlikely, if the Palestinians win international endorsement of sovereignty along the 1967 lines, Israel will become persona non grata anywhere east of the "green line," including in many central neighborhoods within its own capital city, Jerusalem, that have been developed since the 1967 war.

After going over the basics of the report we'll get into some background, with Dan giving a few "yes, but..." pushbacks to my "the whole clusterfark is Obama's fault" arguments. Also in the queue: how WH fickleness is undermining US influence in theaters as far-flung as Iran, Eurasia, and West Asia. Smart power!

References:
* The Unsteady, Unreliable Horse [Blog Talk Radio]
* The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel
* Past Anti-Israel Diplomacy Makes Obama's New Peace Push "Doomed From The Outset" Because Of Inflated Palestinian Expectations [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel
* Foreign Policy Experts

I'll be broadcasting 2009's last TOCS episode live from Bulgaria, Bulgaria being a country that suffered for five centuries under the Ottoman yoke and - emerging from that and later from the Iron Curtain - has just committed more troops to the West's efforts in Afghanistan. That's in no way relevant to tonight's topics, though New Europe/Old Europe divides are always worth emphasizing both as matters of ideology and of Iranian weapons range. In any case - 6:30pm PST, live from Bulgaria, tune in via the Blog Talk Radio page to participate in the chat room and get on the air.

As a way of closing out a tension-soaked year, the show is shaping up to be what the kids call a doozy. Prof. Gerald Steinberg - NGO Monitor President, Bar Ilan University Political Studies chair, and bane of conspiracy addled human rights organizations inclined to hire Nazi-obsessed anti-Israel partisans - discusses the role NGO's are playing in the multi-pronged assault on Israel's legitimacy. Divestment, lawfare/universal jurisdiction, and government funding of pro-Palestinian NGO's are all discussed, plus the prospects for pushing back against those efforts.

The weekly call with Dan Diker will focus on a couple of recent revelatory US/Israeli flashpoints. The first is this stunt that US consul officials just pulled, where they tried to run over an IDF soldier. I actually need to do a full post about this because the US Consulate in Jerusalem is the de facto US embassy to the Palestinian Authority, and this is the second time in two years they've pulled this kind of nonsense. Dan has more than a few comments on that point.

The second incident is this flap over Israel's retaliation to the terrorists who murdered Meir Chai. The US demanded "answers" from Israel because the operation happened in Area A, where US-trained and funded Palestinian forces were supposed to have control. In Dan's JPost op-ed on the controversy - for which he provides context and background on today's show - he pointed out the idiosyncrasy of that demand:

I'm about to start uploading the clips for this evening's very special holiday edition of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. In acknowledgment of the season we've scheduled even more optimism and cheer than usual, starting with a segment about the religiously-driven return of polygamy to the UK and Chechnya. Suffice to say that it's not because fundamentalist Methodists are sweeping across the region. From there things only get better with segments about the newest additions to Iran's arsenal, Hamas's Islamization of the Gaza Strip, and of course this nonsense. Per the usual routine you can tune in live to ask questions and participate in the chatroom, or you can grab the podcast afterward directly from the episode archive.

In between Dan Diker will join the show, this week to talk about how Egypt and Saudi Arabia are reacting to Iran's growing regional assertiveness. Small example of the pool balls bouncing off each other just on the issue of Egyptian/Israeli relations: Arab nationalism 101 is that you use Israel as a scapegoat to funnel internal dissent outward but in the Middle East the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now plant that enemy's proxy in Gaza right between Egypt and Israel, boosting the incentive for government-to-government cooperation even though Egyptians would turn against Mubarak if he publicly colluded Egypt's "Gazan brothers and sisters."

Now add in a weird dynamic where Israel and Egypt usually compete for functionally zero-sum US ties, except they're both so frustrated with the US stance on Iran that they might close the triangle and cooperate to undermine Iran - except the Obama administration would oppose that, putting them in a position where they're blocking rapprochement between two ostensible allies. Terrific.

I already linked to this April article yesterday in the context of Hamas as an outpost of political Islam but let me link it again as prep for today's Diker segment:

In the last week, Egypt has moved against Iran and its allies in the Arab world. Cairo arrested a Hizballah cell that was preparing terrorist operations on Egyptian soil, organized a campaign against Hamas weapons and money smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula, and stepped up efforts to displace Qatar -- an Iranian sympathizer -- as a mediator on Sudan, Lebanon, and other inter-Arab issues. It remains to be seen whether this policy shift will become a sustained part of a grand strategy to restore Egypt's leadership among Arab states or, instead, a more-defensive approach designed to parry previous humiliations from Iran's allies. It is apparent, however, that Cairo is sending a signal to Washington that the "nuclear file" is not the only -- or even the most urgent -- aspect of the Iranian threat.

The US went to Egypt and said "we're really committed to helping you out with this Israel thing," and the Egyptians responded by insisting that they pay attention to Iran. If for no other reason, you should tune in today to hear what happened when the Bush and Obama White Houses tried the same stunt with Saudi Arabia.

References:
* Obligatory Post About New Organ Harvesting Story That Provides "No Evidence" For Organ Harvesting Libel (UPDATED) [MR]
* Arab Countries In Iran's Middle East [Omri Ceren Show]
* Media Outlets Shocked To Find Hamas Imposing Islam, Digging Up Dead Christians Because They "Pollute The Earth" [MR]
* Egypt's Campaign against Iran Sends Washington a Signal [Washington Institute]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Egypt
* Saudi Arabia

Lots of new MR-related audio sprinkled around the Internet this morning. Parts 2 and 3 of my appearance on BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield have been posted and can be found here and here respectively. The podcast is broadcast weekly by the Claremont Institute, and I gave a longer overview of Larry and of the show when Part 1 went up (plus a reminder of what kind dishonest tools staff the NJDC). These new segments are a bit more policy-oriented, ranging from what we used to call the sociology of the academy in Part 2 - liberal academics and their academic liberalism - all the way into Middle East diplomacy and the Iran Lobby in Part 3. The academic discussion includes a good deal of mass communication theory and political philosophy, getting into some interesting stuff that rarely makes its way into MR or into The Omri Ceren Show.

Speaking of One Jerusalem's TOCS, the most recent episode with Dan Diker and Noam Bedein had some pretty critical stuff. Israel hasn't been this militarily besieged since May 1967 and it hasn't been this diplomatically vulnerable since the modern rebirth of the Jewish State. Given that, Diker's rundown of what's driving the UK's branding of Jewish goods from the West Bank - something we unpacked at length - comes pretty close to necessary listening.

The highlights I played from my interview with Noam spoke to global deligitimization in a less direct way: Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli schoolchildren walking to school for more than half a decade, but the only group doing sustained media outreach on the issue is a 7-employee NGO. There's a reason why we spend so much time talking about public diplomacy on the show. More importantly, you'll definitely want to check out the full 30 minute interview that got posted exclusively to the top of One Jerusalem's audio page. As always it had sections that never made it on the air. One section is about Noam's experiences with liberal American Jewish groups. It's exactly what you'd expect, in the sense that it's much, much worse than what you'd expect.

References and related after the jump...

References:
* Bedrock: Omri Ceren Interview, Part 2 [BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield]
* Bedrock: Omri Ceren Interview, Part 3 [BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield]
* Omri On Larry Greenfield's Claremont Institute BEDROCK Podcast, Part I [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House [MR]
* http://www.onejerusalem.org/audio.php
* Noam Bedein - Sderot In An Era Of Hamas War Crimes [Omri Ceren Show]
* One Jerusalem Radio Audio [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel
* Academia

It's that time of the week again. One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, 6:30pm PST, streamed live from Blog Talk Radio. Head over there after the show starts for a chance to ask questions in the chat room or get on the air. The podcast will be available immediately afterward, though of course it's much less fun.

This week's interview is with Noam Bedein, the founder and director of the Sderot Media Center. I've been pushing them on you guys for at least a couple years. The SMC is the only NGO doing consistent media work on the ground in Sderot, which is in turn the only city on the planet where civilians are constantly targeted by rocket barrages (so much much for Israel's vaunted military superiority, which is supposed to be the basis of "risks for peace").

So singular is the SMC, that they were the ones called upon to provide evidence and testimony to the Goldstone Commission about Hamas's war crimes. None of that made it into the UN resolution - and it was never going to, which is why the Israeli government rightly refused to cooperate with Goldstone's kangaroo court - but it's good that an NGO was there to make sure that Goldstone couldn't claim official ignorance. Noam will update listeners on the situation in the Negev, where schoolchildren are again under Palestinian rocket fire, and talk about his organization's role in bringing that to public attention.

As always Dan Diker joins in at the beginning of the show, if only to make sure that there's some expert saying something. Major topics: the Israeli/UK rift - which as of this morning required the British Prime Minister to clarify that UK policy recognizes that Israelis are people too - and Iran's global proliferation network. There's also a segment on the myth of linkage that I'd really like to get to - we'll see if we have time.

Money line from the UK segment, bearing in mind that it takes a lot to get Diker using strong language about anything, let alone about diplomacy itself: today Britain is "leading the charge to uproot and delegitimze the Jewish State." That's a week after Sweden tried to divide the ancient capital of the Jewish people. Bold!

References:
* Noam Bedein - Sderot In An Era Of Hamas War Crimes [Omri Ceren Show]
* Noam Bedein, the founder and director of the Sderot Media Center. [MR]
* Brown: Livni welcome in UK any time [JPost]
* Obama: We Must Achieve Peace By Forcing Israel To Give Up Jerusalem And Open Its Borders [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Cast Lead
* Britain

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show continues in its new later poll-tested time slot, kicking off at 6:30pm PST and running for an hour. You can listen live - which allows you to call in, get on the air, and participate in the chat room - from the TOCS page on Blog Talk Radio. No big interviews or gimmicks today - although, looking ahead, there are a slew of interviews piling up on the other side of the New Year - which is probably good since there's a ton of stuff going on in the Middle East this week.

More than one person in the last 24 hours has described Israel's current diplomatic position as "the worst situation since 1967," which I actually think might be an understatement. Israel hasn't had this much tension with the United States since 1956, and the legitimacy of the Jewish State hasn't been under this much pressure since the birth of the state.

Both segments with Diker today are handed over to that topic, from what why the EU did it to why Israel couldn't stop it to what it means for the peace process. It's a much fuller geopolitical appraisal than, say, the sputtering outrage I was able to muster in posts and segments last week - although there still is something to be said for the basic moral outrage of having the EU sanction Jordan's ethnic cleansing of the Old City in the name of human rights.

In between that: Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon and what it means for Iran's global expansion (background), the status of Netanyahu's vaunted settlement freeze, how Europe's "humanitarian" spinelessness in the face of political Islam swamps this Swiss minaret gambit, and a bunch more.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* The Anti-Israel Diplomatic Endgame? [Omri Ceren Show]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]
* TOCS - 6:30pm PST - Diker On Iranian Expansionism, Sweden's Attack On Jerusalem, Etc. [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Islam In Europe
* European Antisemitism

Based on polling feedback from you - suitably normalized, ala global warming science, by throwing out responses we didn't like - One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show returns from Thanksgiving with a new time slot and a new duration. We'll kick off today's show at 6:30pm PST, allowing families in homes across America to crowd around their computer, to dial in with questions, and to participate in the chat room.

Per your other suggestions, there will be more concentrated ranting by me and less careful analysis by guests. Dan Diker will drop in to contribute expert insights on Middle East geopolitics - today he talks Iran/Sryia/Lebanon and Israeli diplomacy - but the rest of the show will be handed over to a bevy of domestic and international news. That wasn't the first direction we thought of taking the program, but vox populi and so on.

Today's agenda: this Jerusalem broadside from Sweden, Obama's "present" vote on Afghanistan, the left's politicization of science, Iran's most recent fist clenching, and more. As always your questions, concerns, and feedback are solicited and greatly appreciated. Unless you're the lone reader who voted to move the show "to a non-Wednesday time slot, which I recognize will not happen but about which I nonetheless feel very strongly." In which case we'd like to talk to you over here for a second. It'll just take a second.

See you in a few hours!

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* Leaked Global Warming Docs: "Publicity Machine" Used To Manipulate Journalists And Intimidate Scientists [MR]
* Assault On Jerusalem [Blog Talk Radio]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel Coverage
* American Politics

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air at 2pm PST today. Head over to the main Blog Talk Radio site to chat with other listeners, submit questions, and get on the air live. Last week's show had a discussion that began in the chat room and eventually ended up on the air, moving from Bill Clinton's specific trip to Israel to the general shamelessness of US liberals who undermine Israeli leaders then ask for Israelis' trust. This week: more of that, plus extra doses of despair. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's show will be the last before we switch up formats. Based on your input we're moving the show to later in the day and running longer. Tune into today's for more details on those changes, plus the full results of the "how should TOCS change" poll that you voted on.

Also on the agenda for today: expert-level pessimism on a large scale, courtesy of Dan Diker of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs. Have you heard that a deal on Shalit may be close or that it'll be anything but a disaster? Sorry. Thinking that that Israeli/Turkish relationship is on the mend? Don't get your hopes up. Down on unilateral Palestinian diplomatic gambits or worried about Iran? Not enough.

In between I'll be talking about Obama's latest excuses for Iranian foot-dragging, about his Bow Mocked 'Round The World, about new levels of United Nations mendacity, and about European antisemitism. Hating Jews is fun again on the Continent.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* Israel awaiting Hamas chief response on Shalit deal [Ha'aretz]
* Resuming the Turkish track [Ha'aretz]
* Crisis in the Palestinian Authority [Right Side News]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel News and Coverage
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air in a little under an hour. Remember that to hear it live - and to participate - you need to go to the show's main page here. Continuing with this morning's "let's see how this goes" theme, I won't be doing a full guest interview for the first time ever. You're not totally getting abandoned - Dan Diker is still dropping in for 15 minutes of updates and analysis - but the rest of the show will be handed over to news and commentary.

Scheduled topics Dan will be discussing: (1) the renewed diplomatic push on Syria and why - if everything works out perfectly - it'll merely end up being a huge waste of time and (2) the train wreck that is zero Israeli public diplomacy plus the Goldstone Report plus a global anti-Israel delegitimization campaign of unprecedented venom. That would make this the third or fourth week in a row where a different security expert emphasizee that public diplomacy is a strategic necessity for Israel. On the plus side there's no way you're getting bored, since every time this comes up there's a different way Israeli oversights have limited the Jewish States's wartime options. So there's that.

The rest of the show will be the usual scattershot pile of international and domestic controversies, albeit with a skeptical eye towards arguments like "it's not Islam that's behind how the overwhelming number of terrorists are Muslims, it's just extremism in general." Definitely on the agenda: Obama's "dismay" that Jews would try to return to areas in East Jerusalem that Jordan had ethnically cleansed, the unhinged left's obsessive sexist hatred of Palin, the WH's weird habit of suppressing intelligence on Syria and Iran so liberals can keep up their engagement fantasies, and a bunch more. The words "bow" and "grovel" and the phrase "pathetic obsequious scraping" might come up.

The chat room will be open and the phone lines will be active. We're looking for questions, comments, and criticisms. In nothing else today's episode should give you a good idea on how you want to vote in the "What Should TOCS Change" poll.

References:
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Progressive Democrats To Palin: Get Back In The Kitchen [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* American Politics Coverage
* Public Diplomacy Coverage

First, some odds and ends from last week. I should have posted a formal message after the Martin Sherman show, which was arguably the best TOCS yet and is available for download. I didn't get to it so let's take care of the formalities here. Prof. Sherman's a former Shamir adviser, a military intelligence specialist, a widely-cited academic, and - unarguably - among the most careful scholars on the Israeli right. If you make a point of coming at US and Israeli issues from the conservative side of the spectrum - and Google Analytics says you do - you'll have a tough time finding a more exacting account of regional and global geopolitics.

The interview topics ranged from the Middle East peace process to Israeli/Indian relations to Israeli public diplomacy, touching down for specifics and anecdotes in between. The segments I played on the show dealt largely with public diplomacy, which Sherman outlined as Israel's single most significant strategic failing. That plus the rest of last week's show - news, commentary, and the usual brilliance of Dan Diker - can be found on the podcast. The full Sherman interview - which has all the highlights from the show plus 20 more minutes of in-depth Q+A - will be on the One Jerusalem audio page. Obviously you should avail yourself of both.

Now the part about changing up the show. We've been getting feedback from listeners, some quite laudatory some containing note of frustration. TOCS will definitely be changing up after Thanksgiving, though we're still deciding how. Nothing drastic - it'll still be mostly me sounding off, it'll still have interventions of sanity and analysis from Diker, there will still be a weekly interview more often than not, etc. But expect some combination of a new format, a new time slot, and a new show length.

The actual form the combination will take - still an open question. I've embedded a poll so you can sound off about what changes you'd most appreciate. The goal is to get people involved in the live broadcasts instead of channeling all of you to the podcast. Chat room participation has been sedentary and call volume has been positively anemic, creating a situation where we're in Month 2 and I have yet to hang up on a listener. Obviously this will not do.

Feel free to share why on the Facebook page. But remember: ultimately you have to be the change you want to become. Or something.

References:
* Martin Sherman - The Anti-Jihad Imperative [The Omri Ceren Show]
* One Jerusalem - Audio [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy Coverage
* World News Coverage

Today's TOCS episode goes on the air a little less than an hour, with highlights from my interview with Prof. Barry Rubin, analysis from Dan Diker, and the weekly roundup of US, Israeli, and international news. To hear the show live - and to submit questions via the chat room or get on the air through the phone lines - head over to the show's Blog Talk Radio page at 2pm PST.

The call with Diker covered (1) the increasingly pointed tensions between Obama and our NATO allies over Iranian nuclearization and (2) the so-called Fayyad peace plan, where Prime Minister Fayyad wants to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. To give you an idea of the kind of game Diker brings to the latter debate, here's Sunday's CSM article on the plan:

Fayyad's plan was recently analyzed in depth by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), a right-of-center think tank. Dan Diker, the JCPA's senior foreign analyst, says that the plan is potentially dangerous because it doesn't call for working in tandem with Israel on issues that the Jewish state sees as essential to its security... "For Israel to be 12 kilometers [7 miles] away from a Palestinian state that is 3,000 feet above sea level, which is looking down on Ben Gurion airport with most of Israel's infrastructure? After the rockets from Gaza, people are saying, 'Yikes, this is a dangerous proposal,'" Diker says... Fayyad, who clearly does his homework, already has Diker's report from the JCPA printed out in his office in Ramallah.

As always, make sure you grab the full Barry Rubin interview from the One Jerusalem audio page after the show. Prof. Rubin sat down for 35 minutes of questions, only a dozen or so of which made it into the highlight cut.

Topics that you'll get only in the full interview: the decades-long campaign of anti-American mass murder and torture waged by Iran's proxies in Lebanon, the pitfalls of security assistance to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, and how Obama's engagement-centric diplomacy pushes moderate countries into the Iranian orbit. There's also an extended bit about the Obama Effect. It turns out that The One's personal popularity doesn't exactly change the calculations of our allies and enemies. Which isn't to say that Middle East writers like Hendrik Hertzberg are cutting their Obama hagiography out of whole cloth. But, in the final analysis, they're probably not winning any prizes for rigorous and levelheaded social scientific analysis either.

References:
* RubinReports [Official Site]
* Dan Diker Home Page [FreedomOutpost]
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Interview: How Salam Fayyad plans to save the Palestinian dream | csmonitor.com
* New Middle East Events Prove it: Obama Right About Most Everything - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine [Reason]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Diplomacy
* Lebanon and Hezbollah

Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for the fourth installment of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. I wrapped up the interview with Norman Podhoretz this morning and will play you some highlights on the air, split about 66/33 between Podhoretz's new book Why Are Jews Liberals? and his previous work World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. There just wasn't enough depressing material packed into the discussion of how American Jews are unshakably, myopically, religiously committed to an anti-Israel Democratic Party and an antisemitic liberal community, so we meandered between the two books. Nothing like the prospect of an apocalyptic nuclear war triggered by a downward deterrence spiral to darken the mood.

As always, to hear TOCS live you have to click over to the Blog Talk Radio show page while the programs is on between 2pm and 2:45pm. Once there you'll be able to stream the show, call in to get on the air, and - starting tomorrow - participate with other listeners in the chat room (more on that below). After the show ends you can download it as a podcast, plus we'll post the full 30 minute interview - the highlights plus what got cut for time - on the One Jerualem audio page.

Above and beyond the interview, two new features are debuting tomorrow on their way to becoming regular TOCS features:

(1) Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel for weekly discussions on two or three geopolitical issues of the day. In between being the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs and a foreign policy anaalyst at The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dan gets asked with not infrequent consistency to unpack Israeli thinking on CNN, BBC, ABC, FOX, al Hurra, and Arabic al Jazeera. I'd say he's forgotten more about Israeli sentiment and strategy than most people know, but I haven't seen any evidence he forgets stuff. Tomorrow's topics: Turkey's swing away from the West and what Israeli leaders are saying about the P5+1 deal behind closed doors.

(2) I'm going to open up the chatroom on the show page, allowing you guys to complain about the segments in realtime. Anyone who's tuned in - which is to say, anyone who's streaming live from show page - will be able to log in and participate. I obviously won't be able to monitor the discussion so I'm going to have to trust the listeners to be on their best behavior. When that doesn't work I'll have to think of something else, like a script that randomly bans one third of the room whenever someone uses the words "Hope" or "Change." I've got a good feeling about this.

References:
* Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz [Amazon]
* World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Vintage) [Amazon]
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship [MR]
* Collective Nutroots Wisdom: Lieberman Blocking Public Option So Israel Can Attack Iran Or Something [MR]
* Norman Podhoretz - Why Jews Are Liberals [TOCS]
* One Jerualem Audio [Official Site]

Previously:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Jewish Politics
* Arab and Muslim World

I just wrapped up this week's recorded interview with Prof. Richard Landes - he of Augean Stables, Second Draft, and soon to be Goldstonereport.org fame - the sum total of which ran almost 40 minutes. Cutting it down to a dozen minutes for the show was interesting, and you'll be hearing "make sure you check out the full interview" more than a couple times tomorrow. There's some stuff about the violent intimidation of journalists, and how that causes them to overcompensate even when they're out of Palestinian territory, that didn't make the final cut. You'll want to download the full interview after tomorrow's show just for that part.

Speaking of which, let this be your official reminder to tune into The Omri Ceren Show's Blog Talk Radio page tomorrow at 2pm. Remember that's the only way to hear it live and get your chance to get on the air. The podcast gets posted to MR's sidebar widget afterward but the show is only streamed from the Blog Talk Radio site.

In addition to interview highlights, show topics will include: Hezbollah's latest moves in Lebanon, the White House's stupefyingly dumb decision to go to war with Fox News, and whatever excuse the Obama administration will be making up Wednesday morning for their failed Iran strategy. As always, much joy and celebration will be had by all.

References:
* Augean Stables
* The Second Draft
* The Goldstone Report
* The Omri Ceren Show on Blog Talk Radio [Blog Talk Radio]
* Obama's dumb war with Fox News [WaPo]

Previously:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* The Omri Ceren Show At 11am PST Today - Dore Gold On The Rise Of Nuclear Iran
* The Omri Ceren Show - Ledeen Wrap Up And Exclusive Full-Length Interview

The full interview with Dr. Ledeen is now available on the One Jerusalem audio page. It's more than double the length of the highlight clips I played as part of Wednesday's show. If you haven't heard the Wednesday show, by the by, you should hit the widget on the MR sidebar or hop directly to the Blog Talk Radio page. There are still no people calling in but other than that I've almost entirely managed to make the equipment not be broke.

The full interview gets into a lot more detail about the scope of the Iranian threat and about internal Iranian political dynamics. At one point there's a kind of an indirect crash course on the Iranian hierarchy, which will be useful if you're participating in one of those "who's getting arrested today" fantasy leagues that have been springing up. There's also a series of musings on exactly what species of stupid must be swaying our historically-stunted diplomatic community. "What would they have to believe to think that" is always an interesting question, though it'd be a lot more entertaining if it wasn't for their Memento-like approach to Iranian engagement wasn't pushing the Middle East into nonconventional war.

Two final teaser quotes to sweeten the pot on the full interview: (1) Dr. Ledeen answers the question "where do you see the next 6 months going inside of Iran" and (2) there's an extended discussion about Tehran palace intrigue that culminates in the line "people very close to them are betraying them." Genuine inside baseball stuff.

In the meantime you obviously should grab Ledeen's new book Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West. If there was any sense in the world it'd be required reading in the White House. Instead Obama and his staff are engrossed in a book about how the White House needs to be wary of Pentagon wartime advice. What could go wrong?

References:
* AUDIO EXCLUSIVE :: Michael Ledeen, Author of 'Iran & The War Against the West' -- Full Interview! [One Jerusalem]
* Michael Ledeen - Iran's Accomplices To Evil [The Omri Ceren Show]
* Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]
* Reading "Lessons in Disaster" in the White House [Politico]

Previously:
* Khamenei Seizes Control Of Iranian Republican Guard Militias, Installs Son As Head Thug
* HuffPo: Conservatives "Insist The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion Are Real"
* The Omri Ceren Show - Wednesday At 2pm PST - Michael Ledeen On His New Book "Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West"

We're settling into our regular time slot this week, going live at 2pm on Wednesday and running the full 45 minutes. You'll be able to help yourself to the podcast any time afterward either through the widget to the left or through the One Jerusalem frontpage. But to hear the show live you have to be on The Omri Ceren Show's Blog Talk Radio page. The widgets only serve archived shows. The only way to listen live is via the Blog Talk Radio page. Once you're following along from there you can call in, get on the air, and provide grist for the ever-churning mill that is One Jerusalem Radio.

My interview this week is with Michael Ledeen, conservative foreign policy expert and best-selling author, discussing his new book Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West. The book goes on sale bright and early tomorrow morning but you can preorder it either from Amazon or from less traditional but more discounted web storefronts like Overstock.com. As usual I'll play interview highlights tomorrow on the show and then make the full exclusive interview available on the One Jerusalem audio page.

There's an entire slow-moving Book Notes-style interview to be done with Ledeen about how his deep "no despised regime can last" sensibilities map onto his previous work on Machiavelli. My hunch: straightforwardly. But this week's interview focused less on theory and more on the immediately terrifying issues in Accomplice to Evil - the West's shameful sellout of Iranian reformers, the genuinely fragile nature of the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime, and the few - but compelling - options for dealing peacefully with Iranian nuclearization. "We don't have to bomb Iran" is the explicit optimistic upshot, "unless we continue abandoning the struggle for freedom" is the less sanguine warning.

Also on the show Wednesday: the Goldstone Report is undermining moderate Palestinians, the Obama administration's discovery that the Taliban aren't our enemies, Nobel Peace Prize lol's, and whatever happens between now and then. Tune in!

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* One Jerusalem [Official Site]
* One Jerusalem Audio Page [One Jerusalem]
* Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]
* Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely And Important Today As Five Centuries Ago by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]

Previously:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* The Omri Ceren Show At 11am PST Today - Dore Gold On The Rise Of Nuclear Iran
* The Omri Ceren Show Debuts Monday At 11am PST With Dore Gold Interview, Vitriol

Thirty minutes till the very first episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. You should be able to listen to it either here or at One Jerusalem via the Blog Talk Radio widget. If it's not streaming correctly then you can head over to the main TOCS page where it'll definitely be working. You might want to take a stroll over there anyway since there's all kinds of information about calling in and sharing the show.

I wrapped up the interview with Ambassador Gold this morning and I'll be playing highlights from that plus whatever news segments we have time for. The full 25 minute interview will be made available after the show exclusively on the One Jerusalem audio page. The highlights I'll be playing focus mainly on the Ambassador's new book Rise Of Nuclear Iran and how it relates to - and predicted - the last few weeks of Iran-related news. The full interview also includes comments on Obama's Middle East diplomacy and about a couple other domestic and geopolitical controversies. Definitely something to check out.

In the meantime we're unwrapping the plastic here at the palatial One Jerusalem studios and we'll be on the air shortly. If you want to try to get on the air the number is 347-857-2022. We're only going 30 minutes today - 15 less than what we'll be doing during our regular Wednesday time slot - but I'll still try to fir a few folks in.

References:
* One Jerusalem
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Rise Of Nuclear Iran by Dore Gold [Amazon]

Previously:
* One Jerusalem Conference Call With Dore Gold: The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West [Video]
* Mere Rhetoric Updates - Site Changes And News
* The Omri Ceren Show Debuts Monday At 11am PST With Dore Gold Interview, Vitriol

Per the last post, the debut episode of The Omri Ceren Show - hereinafter labeled TOCS in a desperate attempt not to sound clownish - will air tomorrow at 11am. This opportunity is courtesy the newly-minted One Jerusalem Radio, where the thinking apparently goes "our dignified high-level podcasts with noted politicians, scholars, and authors go like gangbusters - just think how popular an anger-filled hour of sarcasm and bile courtesy of an unknown blogger will be!" See also: trust, misplaced.

Tomorrow's interview is going to be with Ambassador Dore Gold, who'll be discussing among other things his new book The Rise Of Nuclear Iran. Gold's recent work got him tagged - by as erudite and careful a leftist mind as Max Blumenthal no less - as a member of the Party Of Death. Apparently the suggestion that Iran has a weapons program comprised of secret enrichment facilities, long-range ballistic missiles, and nuclear-capable warheads constitutes "a gigantic vaudeville of doom, despair, and destruction." So hopefully I'll get to ask the Ambassador why he hates life.

Around 10:30am I'll push a post live with a widget that looks very much like this thing, except it'll hopefully have a working link instead of the "undefined" tag showing now:

I'll also give you information on how to call in, light up the switchboard, and get on the air with questions. I can't imagine any of this will actually work so you should probably count on accessing the show from the main TOCS page on Blog Talk Radio. It has tools for streaming, information on calling in, and lots of social media buttons for sharing and participating.

I'm hoping that after a couple episodes a community of affirmation will coalesce around the show, very much like a group therapy session except with an extra heaping helping of warmth and comfort. Because isn't making a human connection what we're all really here for anyway?

References:
* Mere Rhetoric Updates - Site Changes And News [MR]
* Pastor Hagee's party of death (with Lieberman and Dore Gold) [Blumenthal]
* Reports: Obama Knew About Secret Iran Facility During Transition, Experts Pushed Engagement Anyway With Pro-Iran Pretexts [MR]
* Iran: Surprise, We've Got Working Ballistic Missiles [Video] [MR]
* Intel Shows Iran Fitting Missiles With Nuclear-capable Warheads [National Terror Alert]

Previously:
* Video: Israeli Missile Defense Group Emphasizes Need, Technological Feasibility Of Anti-Missile Systems
* One Jerusalem Conference Call With Dore Gold: The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West [Video]
* One Jerusalem Conference Call: Ambassador Dore Gold On How Current Limited Negotiations Are A Slippery Slope To Losing Jerusalem