Showing posts sorted by relevance for query obama. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query obama. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, June 01, 2020

From Ian:

Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley Is Key to Israel's Security
In order to thrive, and not just survive, Israel must have a minimally defensible eastern border, located in the Jordan Valley, and it must retain control of the eastern mountain ridge.

Yitzhak Rabin, architect of the Oslo Accords, included full Israeli security control over Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, and full freedom of maneuver for Israelis along the main roads of the area, within those parameters.

The Trump peace plan, with its endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, accurately reflects the Rabin parameters. It also calls for a two-state solution and a demilitarized Palestinian state, with Israeli security control over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The U.S. peace plan was coordinated with Sunni states and Israel. That coordination is the result of the Sunni view that an alliance with Israel is an existential imperative in their fight against Iran - something that is of far greater significance to them than the Palestinian-Arab cause.

Jordan, despite its rhetoric, is unlikely to cancel its peace treaty with Israel. It is Israel and the U.S. that stabilize Jordan, not the other way around. There is no Jordanian interest in having a Palestinian military presence on their western border.

The Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria, for its part, has demonstrated that it is primarily interested in its economic wellbeing. The Palestinian-Arab street has shown little appetite to return to the days of the Second Intifada.
David Singer: Trump Needs to Revise his Vision for Judea and Samaria
President Trump’s deal of the century envisioning the creation of a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – is in tatters following its absolute rejection by the PLO – requiring its urgent revision by the president.

Trump has vainly struggled to keep the statehood possibility alive despite PLO President Mahmoud Abbas having consigned it to the dustbin of history on the day of its publication – 28 January 2020 -but the PLO has refused to play ball.

Being a beggar does not fit Trump’s persona. He is allowing Israel to apply sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria in July – with allocation of the remaining 70% requiring another Arab interlocutor to negotiate with Israel.Trump’s vision was always a mirage – offering the PLO less than 100% of Judea and Samaria it had been demanding since 1967– supported by the international community since the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Trump had predicated his vision without even defining who comprised the “Palestinians”. In addition his plan had incorrectly asserted:
1. “Palestinians have aspirations that have not been realized, including self-determination”.

All West Bank Arabs became Jordanian nationals in 1954 until their nationality was revoked by Jordan in 1988.

2. “The State of Israel has also exchanged sizeable territories for the sake of peace, as it did when it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 didn’t rate a mention.

3.“One reason for the intractability of this problem is the conflation of two separate conflicts: a territorial, security and refugee dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and a religious dispute between Israel and the Muslim world regarding control over places of religious significance. ”

There is only one conflict – between Jews and Arabs - fuelled by the Arab League’s refusal to recognise the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948.

The religious dispute was resolved under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty granting Jordan control over places of Islamic religious significance in Jerusalem
.

Jonathan Tobin: Whatever happened to the Emergency Committee for Israel?
Ten years ago, it came in with a bang, but this spring, it disbanded without even a whimper.

The Emergency Committee for Israel came into existence in 2010 in response to President Barack Obama's increasingly aggressive criticism of Israel and his attempt to pressure it to make concessions to the Palestinians. In the following years, as Obama's push for appeasement of Iran culminated in a disastrously weak nuclear deal, the ECI depicted the administration's policies as not just wrongheaded or counterproductive, but an "emergency" that decent Americans should mobilize to oppose.

Democrats blasted the group for what they claimed was an attempt to turn Israel into a partisan wedge issue. Yet by helping to frame the debate about Obama's push for more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, and a rapprochement with Iran, the ECI played a not insignificant role in generating dissent about such dangerous folly and electing members of the House and Senate who disagreed with the administration.

Once Obama got his way on the Iran nuclear deal, the ECI went silent. Earlier this spring, it formally disbanded. But it's prime mover, former Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol has moved on to a different cause, albeit one that puzzles many of those who agreed with him about Obama's attitude towards Israel.

After leading the effort to brand Obama a threat to Israel's existence, Kristol has, along with some other celebrity pundits like The Atlantic's David Frum and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, who were cheerleaders for the ECI, become the voice of the #NeverTrump movement. He leads a new organization whose purpose is to convince Republicans to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. But unlike the ECI, which was often torched by the mainstream media, his new effort is gaining the same kind of sympathetic coverage in The New York Times that the left-wing lobby J Street – ECI's principal antagonist during its most active period – usually receives.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

From Ian:

PMW: Israelis/Jews "defile" Muslim and Christian holy sites
Muslim and Christian holy sites in "Palestine" are "defiled" and "desecrated" by the presence of Israelis/Jews. This hateful demonization is often expressed by Palestinians, including Palestinian leaders.

In December 2018, the PA "presidential office" stressed that Mahmoud Abbas was to have "urgent conversations" with Arab and international bodies about "the dangerous Israeli escalation," which among other things Abbas' office said is being expressed by "the defilement of the holy sites." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 11, 2018]

Every time an Israeli/Jew enters Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount plaza, the PA calls it "an invasion" and a "defilement" or a "desecration."

Recently, official PA radio broadcast a song which included the lyrics: "The Zionist" has "defiled the mosques and churches" in the cities of "Haifa, Ramallah, Gaza, Jaffa, Ramle, Acre, and occupied Jerusalem":
"Where is the Arab army, where? ...
Haifa, Ramallah, Gaza, and occupied Jerusalem call to you
Jaffa, Ramle, Acre, and occupied Jerusalem call to you...
The Zionist has defiled their mosques and churches, and trampled our sanctity."

[Official PA radio station The Voice of Palestine, Dec. 19, 2018]


Khaled Abu Toameh: Muslims protest against kippah-clad policeman at Temple Mount
Muslim worshipers and guards for the Wakf Islamic religious trust protested on Monday against an Israeli policeman wearing a kippah who tried to enter the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount as part of a routine security patrol.

The protesters barricaded themselves inside the shrine after a large police force was rushed to the area, witnesses said. They demanded that the policeman remove the kippah before entering the site, triggering a standoff with police. The incident ended several hours later.

The Wakf claimed the police detained five east Jerusalem men as they were leaving the Temple Mount after the incident. The five were identified as Fadi Elayan, Yahya Shehadeh, Ahmed Abu Alya, Awad Salaymeh and Luay Abu al-Sa’ed.

The Wakf said in a statement that it had ordered the closure of the Dome of the Rock after an Israeli policeman “attempted to storm it while wearing a kippah.” It said that two Israeli policemen enter the site daily – in the morning and evening – for a routine security check.

“The guards at the Dome of the Rock asked the policeman to remove his kippah before entering the site, but he refused and insisted on entering it even by force,” the Wakf statement said. “The guards then closed all the gates of the Dome of the Rock. Later, police officers were deployed at the entrances to the Dome of the Rock, while the guards and worshipers remained inside.”

Khaled Abu Toameh: The UN, the "State of Palestine" and the Torture of Women
This is the kind of story that the "State of Palestine" does not intend to raise during its chairmanship of the largest bloc of developing countries at the UN. It seems that, from the point of view of the Palestinian Authority leadership, Jbara's ordeal does not fall within the category of human rights.

Jbara's story has barely attracted the attention of the international mainstream media. As far as many foreign journalists covering the Middle East are concerned, a Palestinian woman complaining about torture in a Palestinian prison is not newsworthy. Had she been detained by Israel, Jbara would have most likely made it to the front pages of the world's leading newspapers and magazines in a matter of minutes.

The PA regularly complains about human rights violations of Palestinians held in Israeli prison for security-related offenses. But when the PA's own security forces detain and torture a mother of three, Palestinian leaders are found elsewhere -- like at the helm of a UN bloc.
Caroline Glick: Mike Pompeo Destroys the Ideological Legacy of Obama’s Middle East
To sum up, Obama rejected America’s moral right to lead in world affairs. He undermined the morality of Israel’s very existence. He rejected the legitimacy of Arab governments and elevated the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate force in the Muslim world. And he ignored all of the pathologies of the Arab and Muslim world.

Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran; his hostile treatment of Israel; his support for the overthrow of allied and non-threatening Arab governments in Egypt, in Tunisia, and in Libya; and his refusal to take decisive action against either ISIS or Iranian aggression in Syria all were rooted in the anti-American principles he set out in his Cairo speech.

On Tuesday, Pompeo disavowed and condemned Obama’s speech point by point. Pompeo rejected Obama’s denunciation of American power insisting, “America is a force for good in the Middle East.”

Of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt following Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, Pompeo said

Pompeo went on to describe the Trump administration’s actions to restore and strengthen America’s alliances with its Arab allies, its strategy for countering Iranian aggression, and cultivating good relations between the Arab states and Israel.

He underlined the America’s continued commitment to utterly destroying Islamic State forces in Syria, even after U.S. forces are withdrawn. And he spoke in great detail about U.S. actions to curtail Iranian power and influence throughout the region.

There is little doubt that the media, the foreign policy establishment, the European Union and the Democrats will continue to seek to undermine Trump’s policies in the Middle East with the intention of paving the way for a restoration of Obama’s policies – based on Obama’s Cairo speech from January 4, 2009.

But on Thursday, by condemning and disavowing that speech in detail, from the place where it was delivered, Pompeo drove a spear through the lie at its very heart – that America is anything other than a force of good in the Middle East.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column


The end of the historic “Arab-Israeli conflict” may be on the horizon, depending on the outcome of the US presidential election.

Oh, It wouldn’t mean that the Palestinian Arabs will soon give up on the idea that they can flood Israel with the descendants of 1948 refugees and reverse the result of the War of Independence. It wouldn’t mean that the antisemitism and misoziony that are rife in our neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, are likely to end in our lifetimes. It wouldn’t mean that Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan will stop trying to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem, or that the revolutionary regime in Iran will stop planning to wipe Israel off the map and establish a Shiite caliphate in the region. ISIS, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood will not be normalizing relations with the Jewish state no matter what. There will be plenty of conflict and terrorism in our region for the foreseeable future.

But the classical Arab-Israeli conflict, as expressed by the Three No’s of 1967 may soon be history. The idea that no Arab nation can accept the existence of the Jewish state – or even mention it by name – until all of the extreme demands of the Palestinian Arabs have been met has already fallen by the wayside. It is becoming obvious to any honest observer that the reason the Palestinian issue has festered for so many years is that the Palestinians, encouraged by the Arab nations and European antisemites, have never entertained any possibility short of total victory. Now Arab support for their intransigence and rejectionism is falling away.

The UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan have already made normalization agreements with Israel. Others are expected to follow. The most important of those would be Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, the custodian of the Holy Mosques, and the source of funds for countless Islamic institutions around the world. There are reliable reports that the Saudi regime, which is increasingly under the control of Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Defense, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), will normalize relations after the US election – if Donald Trump wins.

It’s hard to imagine that any of this would have happened if not for the change in US policy initiated by the Trump Administration. The recognition of Israeli rights in Jerusalem and sovereignty over the Golan, and the downgrading of relations with the PLO, sent an unmistakable message that America did not support the Palestinian program to replace Israel with an Arab state. Trump’s peace plan, unlike those proposed during the previous administration, is not based on the transformation of the 1949 cease-fire lines into borders, but respects the concept of “secure and recognized boundaries” as expressed in UNSC resolution 242.

In order to truly appreciate the change in policy, compare it to that of the previous administration. Even before his inauguration in January 2009, Barack Obama forced Israel to abandon its campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza, probably the last practical opportunity to do so. In June of that year he visited Cairo and made a speech in which he directly compared the Holocaust to Palestinian “suffer[ing] in pursuit of a homeland” (he didn’t visit Israel until 2013, and then chose not to speak to the Knesset in Jerusalem but rather informally to students). Obama deliberately refrained from helping Iranian dissidents in Iran’s failed Green Revolution. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Arab Spring conflicts in Egypt, endangering Israeli-Egyptian relations. He demanded a freeze on all “settlement activity” which was used by the Palestinians as an excuse to refuse to talk. He deliberately humiliated PM Netanyahu when he visited the White House in 2011. He stopped a shipment of missiles to Israel during the 2014 conflict with Hamas in Gaza. At the same time the FAA ordered flights to Israel canceled, in an action that many thought was ordered by the administration.

Obama rammed through the Iran deal over the objections of a majority in Congress, including huge cash payments that the regime used to finance terrorism and Hezbollah’s military buildup. In 2013, his administration leaked information to the press about Israeli attacks against Iranian weapons shipments in Syria, making a wider conflict more likely. Finally, as a lame-duck parting shot at Israel in 2016, he encouraged the introduction of an anti-Israel Security Council resolution, and instructed his ambassador to abstain, ensuring its passage. And there is much more.

One can understand why Arab leaders might have thought that there was no percentage in improving relations with Israel while the US was kicking her to the curb.

Joe Biden was deeply involved in the Obama Administration’s relationship with Israel. You may recall that Biden was “furious” after an Israeli official announced the completion of a step in the process of approval for the construction of apartments in eastern Jerusalem while he was visiting Israel, precipitating a 45-minute angry phone call full of demands from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to PM Netanyahu.

Biden has said that he would “rejoin the [nuclear deal with Iran] … as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” He opposes Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach and even blames it for Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons. He is likely to reopen the American consulate in eastern Jerusalem that was the unofficial “US Embassy in Palestine,” and the PLO office in Washington that were closed by Trump. He will restore financial aid to the Palestinian Authority that was cut off by Trump because the PA would not agree to stop payments to convicted terrorists (“pay to slay”). He will probably restore payments to UNRWA, which supports the descendants of 1948 refugees and is closely aligned with Hamas in Gaza. And he will bring back the tired rhetoric of the impossible “two-state solution” based on 1949 lines. It’s doubtful that he would be as hostile to Israel as Barack Obama, but he would undo much of the progress made by Trump.

This explains the statement by MBS that he would not normalize relations with Israel immediately if Biden becomes president. There is plenty of opposition in Saudi Arabia to such a bold step, which could even express itself violently. MBS is willing to take the risk if it will lead to the development of a powerful, US-supported Sunni-Israel bloc which could challenge Iran for regional leadership. Why should he do so if the US returns to the Obama-era policy of appeasement of Iran? And the same applies to other Arab countries that are waiting in the wings.

The development of a Sunni-Israel bloc in the region would be a breakthrough that would fundamentally alter the balance of power, and reduce the need for the US to physically intervene to keep the peace. It might set the stage for greater regional independence, so that outside players like Russia, the US, and Turkey would be less able to use its nations as pawns in their power struggles. It might lead to the Iranian people finally throwing off the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Mullahs. It might even bring a solution to the Palestinian problem somewhat closer. It would not fix all of the region’s problems, but it would be a good start.

But all of this depends on continuing Trump’s sharp turn towards rationality in Middle East policy. And Joe Biden is not the guy to do it, especially since he has already adopted some of the same advisers and former officials of the Obama Administration that were responsible for its destructive policies, including several architects of the Iran deal. Biden’s mental condition is a matter of dispute, but the specter of the enormous power of the US president in the hands of unelected and unaccountable operatives who have demonstrated their hostility to Israel and their approval of Iranian regional hegemony is truly frightening.



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Friday, November 06, 2020

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Electing a president under an erupting cultural volcano
The U.S. presidential election has illustrated more graphically than ever before that we are living beneath an erupting civilizational volcano.

The flaming cultural lava is spreading well beyond America. We have to wonder whether we are now watching the steady asphyxiation in the West of both liberalism and democracy.

Nowhere is waiting with greater apprehension for the eventual outcome of the election than Israel. If President Donald Trump is finally edged out, the recent startling prospects for peace in the Middle East may well be extinguished by the hideous prospect of a terrible war.

Those who most threaten the Jewish people, as well as the peace of the world, have been banking on Joe Biden winning the presidency.

He has said he will reactivate the Iran nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew the United States. This would open the cash spigots for the Iranian regime, ending the financial pressure under which it has been weakened.

It would instead be enabled to resume its regional power grab, ramp up its attacks on Israel through its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies, and speed up its development of nuclear weapons with which it intends to wipe out Israel and attack the West. War between Iran and Israel would become much more likely.

There would also be a domino effect in the Arab world. The unprecedented moves by the Gulf states to normalize relations with Israel have been driven principally by their perception that Trump was determined to neutralize Iran, and that their interests therefore lay in an alliance with Israel and America.

If America reactivates the nuclear deal, these Arab states may well revert to the strategy they adopted during the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran: to cozy up to the “strong horse” in the region, which would once again be the Iranian regime.
Michael Lumish: The Idiocy of the Jews
The American public, along with 71 percent of American Jews, just voted for a presidential ticket that has vowed to fund the Palestinian Authority even as the PA insists that it will finance the "Martyrs Fund" which we call "pay-for-slay."

What this means is that whenever some random Arab in Israel runs out to stab a Jew to death in the streets of Jerusalem or Haifa or Tel Aviv they will pay him or his family out of US tax dollars. That is what we mean by "pay-for-slay" and financing it is against the Taylor Force Act and, thus, against American law.

It is also against anything resembling human decency.

The Democrats, if they take the White House, will now require American Jews to pay for the murder of our brothers and sisters in Judea and Samaria (aka Israel) and will do so while smiling at us and telling us what great friends they are to both Israel and the Jewish people.

And please do not forget this, they honestly believe that Jews, even within our traditional homeland, deserve whatever beating we get for allegedly being mean to the innocent, bunny-like Palestinian Arabs.

The Jews and other dhimmis, like Christians and Zoroastrians, spent thirteen hundred years as second and third-class non-citizens under the boot of Arab and Muslim theocratic imperialism in the Middle East. They claimed traditional Jewish holy sites, such as the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as their own.
David Singer: The next 72 days
President Trump – fighting for re-election in America - has now lifted restrictions on American federal investment in science, research and agriculture projects undertaken in Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

Trump’s peace plan, it should be recalled, provides for Israel to ultimately extend its sovereignty into about 30% of Judea and Samaria where some 460000 Israelis presently live.

Signing the agreement lifting the investment restrictions on 28 October - U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman – said:

“Just as we have seen tremendous regional progress on the Abraham Accords, we are also seeing the tangible benefits of President Trump’s policies for bilateral cooperation with Israel”

The Abraham Accords - brokered by President Trump - signed on 15 September by Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and expanded on 23 October to include Sudan after Sudan and Israel agreed to normalize relations – states:

“We support science, art, medicine, and commerce to inspire humankind, maximize human potential and bring nations closer together.”

Trump’s initiative is consistent with this noble principle and has not met with any opposition from its Arab signatories.

However a spokesman for PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said lifting of the funding ban represented:

"American participation in the occupation of Palestinian lands".

The PLO continues to bury its head in the sand as the Arab world’s burgeoning relations with Israel expand. Abbas also runs the risk of missing out on the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian Arab State in Gaza and 70% of Judea and Samaria - as envisioned in Trump’s plan.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: How to Combat Anti-Israeli Hate on College Campuses
The much-ballyhooed UN Security Council Resolution (“UNSCR”) 242, passed in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, does not in any way alter the conclusion that Israel is the best claimant to Judea and Samaria. That resolution affirmed “[w]ithdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”; but as the careful reader will note, the operative language is “territories,” not “the territories,” therefore unambiguously permitting at least some Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria. Additionally, UNSCR 242 also requires Arab UN member states to “[t]erminat[e] . . . all claims . . . of belligerency and . . . acknowledg[e] . . . the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence” of Israel—obligations they clearly have not fulfilled. Given uti possidetis juris—not to mention the wholly defensive nature of Israel’s involvement in the Six-Day War—it would be extraordinarily peculiar to think of Israel as an “[o]ccupying [p]ower” under Article 49. Even assuming, arguendo, that “occupation” did commence in 1967, furthermore, it would not have survived the signing of the Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan, in 1993 and 1994—after all, Article 49 has no legal application outside of international armed conflicts. But this lattermost thought experiment notwithstanding, Israel was not an illegal “occupier” in 1948, it was not an illegal “occupier” in 1967, it was not an illegal “occupier” after the Arabs’ third failed attempt to exterminate Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and it is not an illegal “occupier” today.

This remarkably straightforward analysis and application of international law notwithstanding, supporters of the Jewish state on the American university campus today are routinely assailed as apologists for “apartheid,” illegal “occupation,” and/or European-style ethnic colonialism. Many, perhaps most, of these verbal assaults comfortably fit the requisite criteria for the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. But due to the ubiquity of these incidents, however tragic that ubiquity may be, it is imperative that Zionists squarely address how to best handle them. Based on personal experiences and the vicarious experience of close friends and loved ones from the front lines of the on-campus “Israel wars,” here is some advice to Zionist students under siege on the American university campus today.

First, know your facts and your basic history. Understand, and be able to explain, what exactly the Jewish state of Israel is and how it first came into being. Understand, and be able to explain, the relevant history—the dates and events that matter, and why they matter. Understand, and be able to explain, a rudimentary conception of the international law principle of uti possidetis juris and how it applies to the state of Israel’s rightful legal claim to Judea and Samaria—dating back to Article XXII of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Be respectful of the other side’s narrative, but be confident in the moral and legal superiority of your claim.

Second, be the better person. We Zionist veterans of the on-campus “Israel wars” all know what a determined SJP/JVP foe looks like: threatening, slanderous, bellicose, hysterical. It is imperative that supporters and friends of Israel neither mimic their grotesque tactics nor stoop to their sordid level. Instead, recall: We have the better of the legal argument, we have the better of the historical argument, and we have the better of the moral argument. All we must do is maintain our composure, speak the historical truth, and make the unabashed moral case for Israel’s right to the land of Eretz Yisrael—forcefully but respectfully, unapologetically but reassuringly.

Third, be strong and be proud. You are standing up for the noblest and most just causes of all: the health, safety, prosperity, and security of the Jewish people and the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and territorial sovereignty in their ancestral, biblical homeland. If you are a proud Jew or a proud friend of the Jews, then there is simply no more righteous cause. The modern state of Israel, which was born from the ashes of one of human history’s darkest chapters, has survived against impossible odds and developed the region’s most advanced military—a fighting force, that is, which self-imposes the most stringent ethical norms in all of modern warfare and has executed countless daring raids to rescue Jewish hostages abroad and bring them home to safety. Israel has become the whole world’s envy in technology venture capital. It is an intrinsically moral state, a beacon of light amidst a turbulent sea, and an indispensable military and intelligence ally for the United States. Perhaps most importantly, it is the Jews’ Promised Land. Israel is, in a nutshell, one of the most remarkable human success stories in two to three millennia—and inherently worthy of a robust defense in the lion’s den of today’s neo-Jacobin American university campuses.

On the one hand, it is profoundly sad to see Israel, once such a unifying issue for our normally fractious politics become the intensely debated subject that it is today. On the other hand, it is cause for optimism that, despite all the intensity and vitriol that this issue lamentably engenders, there is such a simple, persuasive, and compelling legal argument to support the modern state of Israel’s rightful territorial claim to Eretz Yisrael—including the most relevant portion, for purposes of this essay, Judea and Samaria. It is my hope that beleaguered students today encountering the BDS movement’s headwinds will be able to utilize this essay to stand up defiantly for Israel’s dignity—and defy those who would smear it as an illicit “occupier.”
Ruthie Blum: Gal Gadot's rude 'wokening'
Suddenly, the international sensation with a sexy Hebrew lilt was blasted for having served in the Israel Defense Forces and – gasp – being proud of it. This was a huge no-no for the BDS crowd, who began to accuse her of war crimes.

Luckily for Gadot, her box-office success was of greater interest to her Hollywood studio than her country of origin or the fact that her military duty involved teaching calisthenics to combat troops. If anything – as she herself has said in interviews – her fitness prepared her for the role with which she has become synonymous.

Even if she had been a commando, however, she would have been at a loss in the face of American "woke" culture, in which the pen has become stiff competition for the sword. What she ought to have learned by now, after so much time among progressive bullies in the United States, is that the animosity she's currently experiencing cannot be countered through appeasement.

Indeed, she can argue that Cleopatra was a descendant of Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy; she can shout "Joe Biden for president" from the rooftop of her LA mansion; and she can work to reassure her social-media followers that her main mission is to promote female empowerment – you know, in the vein of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose Sept. 18 passing spurred her to thank the late judge on Instagram "for everything [she] brought to this world," and to punctuate the tribute with a broken-heart emoji.

None of the above would or does suffice for the radicals bent on discrediting her, not only as a fair-skinned Israeli, but as someone who hasn't gone far enough to the left. Short of renouncing her roots and refusing the cinematic role of her dreams, there's nothing she can do to satiate their cancel-culture hunger.

But she might want to consider expressing a bit of gratitude to the slew of conservatives engaging in ideological warfare on her behalf. That would make her a genuine superhero.
Israeli Actress Gal Gadot Shares Morning Prayer Routine With Vanity Fair, Teaches Hebrew Slang
Israeli actress Gal Gadot talked about her upbringing in Israel and the Hebrew prayer she recites every morning in a cover story interview with Vanity Fair for its November issue.

The “Wonder Woman 1984” star, who grew up in the central Israeli city of Rosh Ha’ayin, told the magazine from her home in Tel Aviv that she started her days with the Jewish prayer “Modeh Ani.”

“I say thank you every morning,” she explained. “In the Jewish culture there’s a prayer that you’re supposed to say every time you wake up in the morning to thank God for, you know, keeping you alive and dadadada. You say ‘modeh ani,’ which means ‘I give thanks.’ So every morning I wake up and step out of bed and I say, ‘Thank you for everything, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

The actress, 35, then closed her eyes, as if she was saying the prayer again, adding, “Nothing is to be taken for granted.”

Gadot grew up in a home with two working parents. Her father, Michael, was an engineer, and her mother, Irit, was a gym teacher who taught sports to Gadot and her younger sister, Dana, Vanity Fair reported.

Following high school, Gadot spent two years completing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces, where she was a fitness and combat readiness instructor, before she went to college.

“I came from a home where being an actress wasn’t even an option,” the former Miss Israel said. “I always loved the arts and I was a dancer and I loved the movies, but being an actress was never a discussion. My parents were like, You need to graduate university and get a degree.”




Gal Gadot to Play Muhammad in Upcoming Biopic (satire)
In a decision that has angered both Muslims and western liberals, Israeli actress Gal Gadot has been cast to play the Islamic prophet Muhammad in an upcoming film about the founder of Islam’s life.

The ‘Wonder Woman’ star and Israel native will don a fake beard to play the lead role in ‘From Medina to Mecca: One Man’s Journey to Change the World, Establish the Caliphate, and Find Himself.’ She will speak Hebrew instead of Muhammad’s native Arabic, but director Patty Jenkins said that “most viewers won’t know the difference.”

“Muhammad was Middle Eastern and Gal is Middle Eastern, so it just made sense,” said Jenkins. “Besides, she knows a little Arabic, like ‘Show me your ID’ and ‘Stop or I will shoot.’”

Gadot’s casting drew criticism from Muslims, who objected to Muhammad being portrayed on film; leftists, who accused Gadot of cultural appropriation; and the alt-right, who opposed both a film being made about a Muslim and an Israeli Jew playing a leading role. James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, called Gadot’s casting a “genocide.”

Gadot was originally cast to play Cleopatra in an upcoming biopic of the Egyptian queen but was forced to drop out after people on Twitter pointed out that she is not in fact Egyptian and did not die in 30 BC. Instead, Rob Schneider will replace Gadot as the film’s lead.

Thursday, January 23, 2020



 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


“…the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” – the will of Alfred Nobel

The Nobel Prize for Peace has been awarded several times for accomplishments in Middle East peacemaking. It’s been given to some truly deserving people, like Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, to some undeserving ones, like Shimon Peres, and to some who – if there were such a thing – in truth deserved the Hitler/Stalin Prize for evil, like Yasser Arafat.

Because of its anti-nationalist and anti-Western bias, the chance that the Nobel Committee will award the prize to US President Trump is microscopically small. But I think that an dispassionate examination will show that they ought to think about it.

Before I explain what I suppose will be considered my contrarian position, I should note that Nobel said nothing about ethical business practices, avoidance of conflict of interest, or general likeability. He did not require monogamy, or insist that a Nobel Laureate refrain from vulgarity in expression, or other unsavory things that Trump could be credibly charged with. The prize is awarded to those who have “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” by promoting peace; and as I will argue, nobody has done more in recent years to reduce Middle Eastern conflict than Donald Trump.

The biggest threat to peace in the Middle East today comes from the Iranian regime: its expansionism, support for terrorism, and of course its nuclear weapons program. Less serious, but still relevant, is the ever-ongoing Arab war against Israel. Trump has acted in a way that promotes peace in both of these areas.

The Obama Administration agreed to a deal (the JCPOA) which removed painful sanctions from Iran in return for an agreement which – in the best case – would have merely delayed Iran’s breakout as a nuclear weapons state for a decade. In fact, the agreement was full of holes relating to inspections and verification, so it is doubtful that even the hoped-for delay would have been realized.

The removal of sanctions mandated by the deal enabled Iran to invest its newly available funds in training and arming terrorist militias in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, in missile development, in undercover terror cells around the world, and in its nuclear program, taking advantage of the various loopholes in the agreement.

Trump exited from the deal, re-imposed sanctions, and took other actions – for example, the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani – which have greatly weakened the Iranian regime and thrown a monkey wrench into its plans, at least temporarily.

The Iranian regime wants a nuclear umbrella to protect it against the US and Israel, while it implements its plan to dominate the region and its oil resources, to push out all American influence, to destroy Israel, and to establish a Shiite caliphate that will replace Saudi Arabia as the center of the Islamic world.

Apparently, the Obama Administration believed that the interests of the US would be served by aligning itself with the Iranian regime against former American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, even if this meant providing Iran a safe path to acquire nuclear arms. On the face of it, this seems absurd, but the administration’s actions throughout the eight years of its tenure can’t be interpreted in any other way. The deeper motivations of Obama and his people remain a matter of (dark) speculation. But Trump’s leaving the JCPOA and his killing of Soleimani unambiguously mark the repudiation of this policy.

The Iranian regime’s Hezbollah subsidiary has been exporting terrorism, particularly against Jewish targets on every continent except perhaps Antarctica. Arch-terrorist Soleimani was pulling the strings at the center of this web, and his elimination was a serious blow to it. He was in the process of setting up proxy militias similar to Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria when he received his 72-virgin salute.

Soleimani was in charge of foreign operations for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), but was also considered one of the three most powerful men in the regime, who might even become the successor to Ali Khamenei. The IRGC is also responsible for suppressing dissent and protests within the country, and Iranian dissidents cheered the death of Soleimani, which they saw as greatly weakening the regime.

Trump’s tweets of support in Farsi to the Iranian people (as opposed to the lack of support shown to Iran’s Green Movement in 2009 by the Obama Administration) also bolstered popular opposition. Although the regime is highly oppressive and not loath to shoot protesters, the present unrest is its most serious challenge since the 1979 revolution.

Trump hasn’t limited his activism to the problem of Iran. It used to be fashionable to claim that the “plight of the Palestinians” was the primary source of instability in the Middle East, and that when it was “solved” (always at Israel’s expense), all of the various players in the region would lie down together in peace. And while this theory ignored things like the Sunni/Shiite conflict, Iranian expansionism, and radical Sunni groups like ISIS, it is nevertheless true that the Palestinian Arabs created chaos for decades, leveraging the Cold War, and now the Iranian-American conflict, to keep their anti-Israel war going.

In 1970, the PLO fought a mini-war against Jordan. Then it moved to Lebanon, where it started a vicious civil war whose embers still smolder and threaten to flare up. In 1982, it provoked Israel into a destructive war in Lebanon. During the 1980s, Palestinian terrorists brought their murderous activity to Europe as well as the Middle East, hijacking planes and even a cruise ship, and murdering Jewish athletes.

Part of the Obama/Ben Rhodes plan mentioned above to realign US interests included “solving” the Palestinian problem by weakening Israel and creating a Palestinian state. The idea was originally enunciated in the Iraq Study Report that Rhodes contributed to in 2006. Forcing Israel back to pre-1967 lines was part of the plan.

Obama and his people ignored the fact that Palestinian objectives didn’t stop at the Green Line (maybe they were aware of this and thought that the original creation of a Jewish state was a mistake anyway). They ignored the Iranian regime’s oft-stated intent to “wipe Israel off the map.” They followed a course that would reinforce the belief of both the ayatollahs and the PLO/Hamas that they would be given Israel on a platter, a dangerous tactic that could bring about a regional war that might dwarf the “big wars” of 1967 and 1973.

Trump short-circuited all of this. He cut funding to UNRWA, the UN agency dedicated to building an army of stateless “Palestinian refugees” to use as both a diplomatic and military weapon against Israel. He rectified the embarrassing failure of the US to admit reality, recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and move the US Embassy there. He signed the Taylor Force Act to keep American taxpayers from subsidizing Palestinian terrorism. He recognized Israel’s possession of the Golan Heights, essential for her security. His State Department rejected the idea that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were automatically illegal. In short, he took steps to put an end to the decades-long policy of encouraging the PLO and Hamas in their belief that a combination of terrorism and diplomacy would ultimately evict the Jews from the land of Israel.

Trump may have cut the Gordian Knot in the Middle East. If the American voters give him time to follow through, he may be able to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and perhaps help the Iranian people throw off the oppressive revolutionary Islamic regime. He might even end the Arab war against Israel, after some 100-odd years.

And if he succeeds, nothing could be more fitting than Donald Trump becoming the fifth American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Monday, July 06, 2020

From Ian:

JCPA: The Third Wave of Anti-Semitism is on the Way
What is currently being promoted by the international community is not a discourse of criticism, which would be legitimate, but instead a storm of prejudices.

Research and polls carried out in dozens of countries testify that virus-inspired anti-Semitism has gone viral on social media, and it is the continuation of the ancient conspiracy theories of blood libels that have always painted the Jews as the source of diseases and the spreaders. Public opinion will surf again on this deadly anti-Semitic wave.

The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, personally promoted the coronavirus blood libel by stating that Israeli soldiers and settlers knowingly spread the Coronavirus widely among Palestinians. His spokesperson went so far as to state that the occupation itself was the virus and that the Jews had inflicted the pandemic on the Palestinians. The phenomenon of the anti-Semitism plague converged with the Coronavirus, which then intertwined with subsequent waves.

Responsible national and international leaders who have taken a stance to combat anti-Semitism in this period have mobilized to fight the idea that the Jews are responsible for COVID-19. In addition, some leaders seek to quash the conspiracy theories that imperialist Jews and their wealth are attempting to dominate the world. Some combat those who want to obliterate the Shoah’s memory. Others confront Neo-Nazi hatred. And others focus on their societies’ bias against the Jews because of their hatred, prejudice, and ignorance about Judaism.

The political, diplomatic, and academic spokespersons who care deeply about the adoption and the promotion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), upheld the connection between hatred for Israel and anti-Semitic hatred during a webinar conference in June 2020. Katharina Von Schnurbein, the European Commission Coordinator on combating Anti-Semitism, alluded to a 2019 survey in which 85 percent of Jews declared that they feel they are perceived through the Israeli lens. Jews are synonymous with Israel.

The question that arises is the following: if, as the IHRA suggests, anti-Israel hatred is the engine of anti-Semitism, its twin, why are there no measures to deal with this dual-threat? Why not be more cautious when dealing with issues relating to Israel? Why not challenge both hatreds by delving deeper into Israel’s history, its democratic nature, humane inspiration, and the heroic story of the country itself?

Institutions and states that have implemented measures against anti-Semitism and have adopted the IHRA should monitor how they and their institutions influence public opinion and the spread of prejudice against Israel. Political actors must be more cautious before putting labels on Israeli-Jewish consumer products, or bandying about apartheid, or legitimizing BDS. The examples are endless, and the many condemnations and institutional threats today push anti-Semitic crowds into the streets with a “moral cloak.” These political actors and institutions are committed to fighting against anti-Semitism, but they are also responsible for creating it. This has been the case since the 1975 UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism.
Rachel Riley – JLGB LIVE Youth-Led Q&A (h/t Arie)


South Africa paid the price for defaming Israel
Party members are expelled if they set foot on the tarmac of Ben Gurion International. Foreign Affairs bureaucrats walk the talk of the local BDS franchise, so rotten that it lost the license to tell lies about Israel under the BDS brand. But dare challenge bizarre views and you’re toast.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is toast. He is threatened with removal from office. For loving Israel he is guilty of “endangering the justice system.” This from a governing party that beat the rule of law stone dead so that comrades could loot the country to their heart’s content.

Two things that the Chief Justice said brought haters out of the woodwork. One, he connected Israel to the bible, and two referred to God’s blessings and curses. To me the latter struck the rawest nerve.

Then a law professor entered the fray to do a non-political, objective hatchet job on Mogoeng Given that law professors who recognise the sovereign rights of Israel are as rare as a pig in Palestine, we can speculate if the professor would have delivered the opinion he did, or any at all, had the Chief Justice laid into Israel for crimes against humanity.

Israel more than any country attracts claims beyond wild, and most especially Jews with a chip on their shoulder who compete with Palestinian Arabs to come up with the wildest. Here is one example of suggested reading: The Chief Justice the Bible and Palestinian Real Estate, Daily Maverick 01.07.2020.

But for my money, the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian (Arab?) wins hands down. Yasser Arafat’s PR, Hannan Ashrawi, disclosed the astounding fact to the Washington Jewish Week on February 22, 2001. No one blinked. She was not the first or the last to bring Christ into play. It is done annually. “Every Christmas, Palestine celebrates the birth of one of its own,” proclaimed a PLO’s statement at Christmas time. I don’t know if anyone has made Jesus into a Muslim, but the PLO seems to leave that possibility wide open.

Hate is one of the more perverse emotions. More than it destroys the subject of hate it destroys the hater. In party politics hatred can harm a whole country. Antisemitism in fact could be at the bedrock of South Africa’s collapse into a failed state.

Hell, though, is not the end of the world. Life in a failed state is not entirely bad. You have to deal with elements more or less stable, more or less controllable, more or less mad. Only one thing really matters – to recognise the curse that brought you to hell and what will keep you there unless you learn that those who curse Israel will be cursed.

Tuesday, February 02, 2021


Last Friday, during the White House Briefing led by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, we were treated to the following exchange:

Q Thank you, Jen. Two quick foreign and one domestic, if that’s okay. Can you confirm officially that Robert Malley has been appointed Special Envoy for Iran? Is that —

MS. PSAKI: I can. I believe it was announced this morning. Yes? Or I guess I can confirm it here too for you.

Q That would be great. And then the — as you know, settlements have been a major obstacle to getting the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Would President Biden consider it — does he believes settlements are — should be halted in the West Bank so that the Palestinians will come back?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t have any new comments from President Biden on this or the current circumstance. He’s obviously spoken to this particular issue in the past and conveyed that he doesn’t believe security assistance should be tied. But I don’t have anything more for you on the path forward toward a two-state solution. [emphasis added]

The journalist's question contains 3 mistaken assumptions -- assumptions that at this point have also been accepted without question by the media as fact.


Assumption #1: Settlements are an obstacle to the Palestinian Authority coming to the negotiating table.

Just last month we noted that historically this claim is simply not true. Jackson Diehl -- the deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post -- made the point in 2010 that Abbas admitted that he demanded a settlement freeze before coming to the table because Obama did:
When Obama came to power, he is the one who announced that settlement activity must be stopped. If America says it and Europe says it and the whole world says it, you want me not to say it?
Going a step further, the settlements are part of the negotiations as per Oslo, not a sweetener to encourage the Palestinian Arabs to first come to the table:
Settlements are only one of the six issues to be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians according to the original Oslo Accords from 1993. To single out the issue of settlements ahead of any negotiations while ignoring other bilateral issues constitutes a fundamental distortion of these signed agreements.
Yet this distortion has taken hold, including in the minds of the journalists who are supposed to be in command of the facts.


Assumption #2: Israel should make unilateral concessions

Why should the assumption be, as this journalist clearly believes, that unilateral concessions by Israel owes it to the Palestinian Arabs -- and the peace process itself -- to make immediate sacrifices?

Why does nobody suggest a freeze on Abbas's pay-to-slay policy that encourages terrorism and the murder of Israelis?

In fact, we have already seen Israel commit to a freeze in the settlements in 2009, in a sign of good faith that Abbas would come to the negotiating table.

To the contrary, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu implemented a 10-month security freeze in order to coax the Palestinians to the negotiating table, Abbas essentially responded with a 9-month negotiating freeze. And after the moratorium on Israeli building expired, he again refused to talk peace.
Those unilateral concessions to the Palestinian Arabs do not work.


Assumption #3: Settlements are being built

The building of Israeli settlements is supposed to be a a major obstacle -- and that is a claim that was made over and over by the Obama administration:

Back in 2014, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg about his Middle East policy, Obama claimed:
we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we've seen in a very long time.
Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes claimed, on December 23, 2016, that "thousands of new settlements are being constructed...you saw tens of thousands of settlements being constructed"

On December 28, 2016, following the US abstention that allowed the passing of UN Resolution 2334, then-Secretary of State Kerry claimed, "We’ve made countless public and private exhortations to the Israelis to stop the march of settlements."

In a speech Biden gave before J Street in April 2016, he copied that heated rhetoric, condemning "the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years – the steady and systematic expansion of settlements..."

In January 2017, I wrote a post debunking the claim of settlement expansion in detail -- and showed how even then the media parroted these fabrications. 

In point of fact:
There were 228 settlements -- not tens of thousands
What Kerry calls a march of settlements in 2016 is 3 settlements in 2012 -- with none from 1990 till then and none from the end of 2012 to 2016 when Kerry made his claim
If you look at what is actually going on, you see the issue is not the building of an expanding number of settlements, but of homes inside those settlements.
Even taking into account that the issue is the houses being built, according to Haaretz in 2015 -- the number of houses constructed was down under Netanyahu:
According to data from the Housing and Construction Ministry, an average of 1,554 houses a year were built in the settlements from 2009 to 2014 — fewer than under any of his recent predecessors.

By comparison, the annual average was 1,881 under Ariel Sharon and 1,774 under Ehud Olmert. As for Ehud Barak, during his single full year as prime minister, in 2000, he built a whopping 5,000 homes in the settlements.
So:
Israeli settlements are not the obstacle to negotiations, they are one of the issues to be discussed at the negotiations
There is no justification for Israel to concede on a negotiating point, while Abbas merely pockets those concessions
Settlements are not expanding. Houses within the settlements are being built to meet the need.
There was a time when journalists asked the kinds of questions that kept the administration on its toes --  attacking the points, not the people presenting them.

Of course, that would require a certain level of knowledge as well as a willingness to challenge the common perception.

My favorite example is a daily press briefing held on November 17, 2009, when the following exchange took place between the State Department Spokesperson Ian Kelly and Matt Lee, reporter for the Associated Press. The topic was what the Obama administration had accomplished till then in advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:
MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --

QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --

MR. KELLY: Obviously --

QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.

MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration [under President George Bush] did in eight years. [emphasis added]

QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.

MR. KELLY: All right.

QUESTION: I’ll drop it.
The question is, who in the media is both willing and able to keep the Biden administration honest about its Middle East policy now.

Hat tip: IM



Wednesday, February 03, 2021

vic

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column


The other day YouTube decided that I wanted to see a compendium of large ships crashing into each other or into docks, cranes, and other installations. What impressed me was the unavoidability of the crashes: the ships moved ponderously, inexorably, toward their fates as tiny humans scuttled around on the decks, horns blowing with great urgency (I imagine the ship’s captains shouting “Full astern!”), but all for nothing when the almost irresistible force of the ship meets the almost immovable object of its nemesis in a crescendo of crushing, grinding, and snapping.

Whew. And this reminded me of the situation with Iran. The Iranians have ramped up their production of enriched uranium and activated advanced centrifuges in their Natanz facility, and they are threatening to kick out IAEA inspectors on 26 February. They are telling US officials that if they want to reenter the (worthless) deal, they’d better hurry and start removing sanctions while there is still time. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for his part, is demanding that the Iranians first “return to compliance,” although what that would mean in practice considering the progress they have made is unclear.

What is becoming clear is that the Biden Administration is dead set on a course of returning to the deal, although Blinken, at least, wants to renegotiate it. On the other hand Robert Malley, President Biden’s choice for Special Envoy to Iran, wants to jump back in to the deal as it was when President Trump took the US out of it. Malley’s think tank published a position paper a few days ago, which contained this:

The Biden administration should pursue U.S. re-entry into the 2015 nuclear deal, starting by revoking the 2018 order ending U.S. JCPOA participation and initiating a process of fully reversing Trump-era sanctions while Iran brings its nuclear program back into full compliance. As further confidence-building measures, Washington could support Iran’s International Monetary Fund loan request as a sign of good-will in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and perhaps engage Tehran in discussions on a prisoner swap.


Do you hear the horns blowing and the captains shouting yet?

Persia was among the earliest known places where the game of chess was played, and the Iranians have proven to be very good negotiators. A strategy that calls for American concessions up front (“confidence building”) will fail, as it did under Obama. Only a tough strategy that demands action by Iran as an alternative to more pressure (“an offer that they can’t refuse”) will succeed. The Trump Administration left the US in a strong bargaining position toward Iran, with very painful sanctions in force. The US should insist on concrete, verifiable steps by Iran before removing any sanctions, and should threaten to take even stronger action if Iran does not comply.

Biden’s administration is replete with former Obama Administration officials (conservative blogger Jeff Dunetz calls it “the reBama Administration”), including Malley, who incidentally is also very out front about his pro-Palestinian sympathies. From the standpoint of American or Israeli interests, Malley is a wretched choice. He is far more pro-Iranian than even Blinken, Jake Sullivan, or Wendy Sherman, all former Obama-era Iran hands retreaded by Biden.

One wonders why Biden picked a team that is unlikely to produce better results than it did under Obama, and may even do considerably worse. Maybe Blinken vs. Malley is a good-cop bad-cop routine. But who knows if Biden was responsible for those choices, or if they were made for him?
Fortunately I am not Prime Minister of Israel, but if I were I would not expect better performance from a reBama Iran team than from the original one. And I think this could have been known for some time. Biden announced his intention to reenter the deal in September of 2020. From then on, it became clear that any military action by Israel – even special operations short of war – would be construed by the new administration as a slap in the face.

This could be the reason that Biden announced so early that he would be re-entering the deal: so that the “slap in the face” argument could be used against any last-minute Israeli action before Biden took office, or even before the election. And it was indeed deployed (by Obama surrogates Ben Rhodes and John Brennan) to criticize Israel’s assassination of the head of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on 27 November.

Rhodes and Brennan said that Israel’s act was “aimed at undermining diplomacy” between the US and Iran, and that seemed ridiculous. How could anyone see it as anything but an attempt to slow Iran’s progress to the bomb? But in fact they were sending a message: after Biden becomes president, we’ll remember anything you do now, and you’ll be sorry.

I missed this. On 1 October, I wrote that I had expected that if Biden won the election, Israel would act against the Iranian nuclear facilities in the last weeks of the Trump Administration. I was wrong. Apparently our government got the message that the Americans would not forgive Israel if she eliminated the need for an Iran deal before Biden could sign one.

The weeks passed, Iran ramped up their processes, and Israel did nothing. Now that Biden is in the White House, it is even less likely that Israel will act, despite the recent sabre-rattling of our Chief of Staff.

Israel is in the position of a helpless observer on the deck of a small vessel who can only watch as a huge cruise ship or supertanker plows into it – which is just where the people pulling Biden’s strings want us.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

In 2010, Jackson Diehl -- the deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post -- suggested 
How Obama sabotaged Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Netanyahu was responsible for the impasse.

Diehl disagreed:
For 15 years and more, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas conducted peace talks with Israel in the absence of a freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Now, it appears as likely as not that his newborn negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu -- and their goal of agreement on a Palestinian state within a year -- will die because of Abbas's refusal to continue without such a freeze.

...So why does Abbas stubbornly persist in his self-defeating position? In an interview with Israeli television Sunday night, he offered a remarkably candid explanation: "When Obama came to power, he is the one who announced that settlement activity must be stopped," he said. "If America says it and Europe says it and the whole world says it, you want me not to say it?"

The statement confirmed something that many Mideast watchers have suspected for a long time: that the settlement impasse originated not with Netanyahu or Abbas, but with Obama -- who by insisting on an Israeli freeze has created a near-insuperable obstacle to the peace process he is trying to promote. [emphasis added]
Whether Obama deliberately pressed for the freezing of settlements in the hope of pressuring Israel into a concession or blundered into creating a deadlock -- either way, Obama's interference changed the Palestinian story, turning a freeze of settlements into a new demand.

Now we see something similar happening with the coronavirus.

One of those leading the way, on January 3rd, in accusing Israel of deliberately withholding the vaccine from the Palestinian Arabs was The Guardian:



This was followed by the usual gang, such as Haaretz on January 10th


And Al Jazeera on January 13th:


Among many other media outlets.

But that was not what the Palestinians themselves were saying.

Nov. 21, 2020:‎
PA meets with WHO, UNICEF, UNRWA “to ensure that Palestine is provided ‎with adequate Coronavirus vaccines” (Israel not invited)‎

Dec. 12, 2020:‎
PA orders “four million doses of the Russian vaccine… expected in Palestine by ‎the end of this year” (Israel's help not requested)‎

Jan. 9, 2021:‎
PA announces: “Four vaccine producer companies [will deliver for] 70% of the ‎Palestinian people… the WHO will provide for 20%” (Israel's help not needed)‎

Jan. 9, 2021:
PA announces: “Two million doses were ordered [from AstraZeneca]… we ‎received an official response from the company… [Also] the Russian company ‎Sputnik, and a vaccine was ordered… We are not just waiting… we are ‎working…” (Israel's help not needed)‎
But with the media helpfully getting the story wrong and ganging up on Israel, the PA just couldn't resist:
Jan. 10, 2021:‎
PA Foreign Ministry demands that Israel “supply the Palestinian people with ‎Coronavirus vaccines… [Israel is] racially discriminating against the ‎Palestinian people, and negating its right to health [services]… an apartheid ‎against the Palestinian people in the field of health”
You can almost hear Abbas now, "If American media says it and European media says it and the whole world says it, you want me not to say it?"

Going a step further, the vaccine accusation is beginning to get traction in Congress too:


According to the article, the new Congresswoman, a member of the "progressive" wing of the Democrats 'shared' her copy of the Guardian article.

And now with this story still making the rounds, the "human rights" organization B'Tselem has come out with their report accusing Israel of apartheid.



B'tselem and their friends are posting and reposting this all over the internet to get maximum exposure, tossing around the claim that Israel is guilty of "Jewish supremacy."




Of course, the Palestinian Authority is already accusing Israel of apartheid, so this report won't have any effect on Palestinian propaganda.

Instead, the timing of the report and the massive distribution over social media may indicate a campaign to influence more than a Congressperson or two.

This could be one component of an orchestrated campaign to influence the incoming Biden administration. The lingering accusation of Israel withholding the vaccine could be part of this too.

If so, it is going to be a long 4 years.




 

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