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

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of JStreet, on Sunday condemned the assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Ben-Ami took his cue from the EU, which took its cue from Tehran. One can understand why Tehran would condemn the assassination of the man considered to be the father of Iran’s nuclear program, someone considered “irreplaceable” in the mullahs’ quest to get the bomb. Iran wants the bomb, and the elimination of Fakhrizadeh is a setback. Big time. The condemnations coming out of Brussels and from Ben-Ami, on the other hand, can be explained only by the famous quote from Winston Churchill:

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

It makes sense that JStreet would want to appease Iran by condemning the elimination of Fakhrizadeh, a man with deep knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program. A nuclear Iran threatens the free world, not least of all the United States. Go to any protest, or even to the Iranian parliament after Soleimani was killed, and you will hear the chants of, "Marg bar Āmrikā," (Death to America).


JStreet’s Ben-Ami hopes that in agreeing with his wannabe murderers, they will consent to eat him last.

Perhaps more to the point, JStreet is an anti-Israel organization pretending to engage in Israel advocacy. JStreet actually shares the aim of the Iranian nuclear program: the elimination of the Jewish State—witness the organization's covert support for BDS. It is believed that Israel is behind the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, though the Jewish State has neither confirmed nor denied a role in the targeted killing of the scientist. Israel has a good motive for taking out Fakhrizadeh and that is that while a nuclear Iran may be the greatest existential threat to the free world—which unfortunately includes Jeremy Ben-Ami among its inhabitants—Israel is Iran’s closest target, and the elimination of the Jewish State a primary goal for Khameini.

Ben-Ami, knowing that Israel is first on the menu, hopes that in condemning the actions of the Jewish State, he will be last on the list of tasty items to be consumed by the crocodile named Iran. That is why Ben-Ami was pleased to be included on the guest list of Jewish leaders invited to Obama’s table to discuss how Israel might be pressured to give away more indigenous Jewish land to the Arabs. Obama is the main architect of that ultimate appeasement of Iran: the JCPOA (which Iran never signed). It is Obama who sent the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, pallets of untraceable cash.

It is only natural that Ben-Ami would wish to be a starring ingredient in the dessert course, to ally himself with Obama. Ben-Ami, like Obama, wants to be eaten last. Alas, the only way for these men to fulfill this aim is to make themselves relevant until the end. They hope that if they appear to share the goal of the crocodile, and even assist in procuring food for the beast, the beast might save them for another day, when there is nothing tastier to eat.

The problem is that the crocodile is a bully, and the problem with appeasing a bully is that the bully always comes back for more. Which means that the bullied are never free, even as they delude themselves that the opposite is true, that they are saved. Being last to be eaten, on the other hand, by definition means that one is eventually eaten. Which is how the game ends.

And the game always ends unless you stand up to the crocodile, to cut off its sustenance for good. That is the only way to do away with the crocodile, once and for all. Which Israel knew. Which is why Fakhrizadeh had to go.

It only makes sense. It’s the only real way to game the system, to not get eaten, last or otherwise.

Anyone who understands this, anyone with a modicum of sechel or common sense, therefore did not vote for Joe Biden. Biden, predictably, intends to revive the JCPOA, because he too, hopes to be eaten last, as do those who voted for him. The Biden voters either hope to be last to be eaten by the Iranian crocodile, or else they are oblivious to the danger in the swamp. They are oblivious because the media dangles progressive sugar plums before their eyes, the shiny and exciting causes they prefer to embrace above life itself: BLM, Antifa, illegal immigrants, and above all, a supreme hatred of the Orange Man.

The people who voted for Biden (and Obama before him), can’t see the crocodile lurking, waiting to pounce on those with no clue of the danger waiting for them in the wings. The crocodile, meanwhile, watches on as its early prey, the Biden voters, spew their hatred of anyone who thinks differently from them: the people who won’t get with the plan. The Biden voters don’t know that all along, the plan has been out of their hands and even unknown to them, the people to be eaten first.

The people who voted for Biden, knowing he would probably reinstitute the JCPOA, are like so much unwitting chum. They have no idea how delicious they are, as an appetizer, or even a main course. Ben-Ami, meanwhile, awaits his turn on the platter with bated breath—perhaps garnished with edible gold—as the crocodile opens its yawning cavern of a mouth, never to be sated or satisfied.

Always wanting more.



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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

From Ian:

Can Biden See What’s at Stake in the Middle East?
The real issues in the immediate future are how the Biden Administration positions American interests vis a vis Iran and, in particular, the JCPOA. Trump’s Iran adviser, Elliott Abrams, was dispatched over the weekend to Israel to engage in a series of meetings and briefings with top Israeli officials, including, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Media reports indicate that, in its final two months, the Trump Administration will issue a barrage of sanctions against Iran in coordination with Saudi Arabia and, likely, other Gulf states. The focus of such sanctions will be to impact the development of the Iranian ballistic missile system and, generally, to frustrate the incoming administration’s instinct to pander to the Iranian regime, a la Obama.

The Iranian economy is on the finest knife-edge, more imperiled than at any time during Obama’s tenure. Perhaps the hope of the Trump Administration is that sharpening the blade a touch more could be lethal and tip the balance, forcing Iranian capitulation on certain civil liberties and human rights issues, and further pressuring the increasingly besieged tyrannical regime in Tehran.

Biden and his team have been very clear regarding their intentions to “reopen” the JCPOA for renewed American leadership and participation pending Iranian compliance with its terms. The incoming administration has also telegraphed a desire to support the realization of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Each of those sweeping positions is code for a radical re-alignment of Mideast geopolitical policy from the Trump years; basically, reverting to the so-called “Obama doctrine”, which was far from a raging success in its eight-year lifespan.

Biden enters the White House at a time when the strategic and commercial alliances in the Middle East have been utterly transformed from what they were four years ago. Among his earliest tests will be whether he understands the gravity and irreversibility of this change. Obama turned his back on traditional U.S. allies in the region, causing a deep mistrust to set in and harden. Biden cannot just walk back into the room and flick the switch. The centrality of Palestinian statehood to Middle Eastern reality was the foundation of Obama’s approach to the region. That “reality” no longer exists. The Gulf states have made clear that they recognize a permanent Israeli presence in the region and urge the Palestinians to do so, too.

Without fresh eyes and policies, Biden risks the humiliation of a very downgraded relevancy in the region. The same old same old just won’t cut it.
Mordechai Kedar: How Israel Should React to President-Elect Biden
One of the realities to which Israel will have to adjust during a Biden administration is that Barack Obama will probably play a role, officially or otherwise, as an advisor on national security or political affairs. This means Israel needs to start having conversations with members of the emerging Biden administration rather than move forward, in the waning days of Trump’s term in office, to achieve goals that the Biden administration will not accept.

It has been suggested that Israel should exploit the remaining months of the Trump presidency to extend sovereignty over parts of the West Bank. Doing so would echo the approach of Barack Obama, who, during his own transition out of the Oval Office in December 2016, supported the thoroughly anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334, spurning President-elect Trump’s request that he not do so.

Applying Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank over the next two months without coordination with the incoming Biden administration might so greatly disturb a Biden administration that pressure could be brought to bear to declare all Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank illegitimate. Implementation of sovereignty could even result in the imposition of US sanctions on Israel (in relation to settlement, sovereignty, or both), a move that would be heartily endorsed by members of Congress of the likes of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Israel must absorb the fact that the Democratic Party of today is not the same party it was eight years ago. It has become extremist in some ways, a process that intensified sharply in response to Trump’s entry into the White House and accelerated throughout his four-year term in response to his policies, both domestic and foreign. Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel positions have multiplied and increased their grip on Democratic constituencies. Voices are already being heard suggesting the reopening of Palestine Liberation Organization offices in Washington and moving US embassy activities back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.

But the most complicated problem with applying sovereignty right now concerns the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, and also (implicitly) Saudi Arabia. These countries will view an Israeli implementation of sovereignty without prior coordination with them as evidence of Israeli fraud, because the excuse to normalize relations with Jerusalem was Israel’s agreement to indefinitely postpone the application of sovereignty in the West Bank. If Israel responds to Trump’s loss by immediately withdrawing from its commitment not to enforce sovereignty, Jerusalem’s new friends will feel it has deceived them. That feeling will surely work against Israeli interests.

Tuesday, June 05, 2018



J Street seems to have a habit of hurting Israel in the pursuit of its own agenda.

J Street Support for BDS

An article came out Monday in The Washington Free Beacon detailing how J Street Chapters Aiding BDS Campaigns on Campuses. While it is true that the deputy director of J Street U, Catie Stewart, claims that the organization does not support neither "Apartheid Week" nor BDS campaigns on college campuses, there are indications that J Street hedges on their position and do not necessarily oppose BDS per se:
o  In response to a BDS referendum at the University of Minnesota in March, a pro-Israel coalition launched a campaign in opposition. J Street U released a statement opposing the referendum not because it was anti-Israel, but because "this resolution and others like it only serve to empower the Israeli far-right" and that you cannot "effectively oppose BDS without also actively opposing the occupation that fuels it." The BDS referendum passed at UMN in March. 
o  When a BDS resolution was proposed at Columbia University/Barnard, J Street U posted a statement, since revised, stating that it "opposes the International BDS Movement." But then it went on to decry "the conflation of anti-occupation with anti-Israel," accusing anti-BDS campaigns as being "government funded attacks" targeting "anti-occupation groups, like the New Israel Fund, B'tselem, and Breaking the Silence" while pretending to deal with "the handful of hardline anti-Israel activists." The Barnard BDS resolution passed. 
When a BDS resolution was brought up at George Washington University in April, the J Street U there did not oppose BDS per se, instead again used the familiar theme that "BDS legislation provides Israel's far-right government with the talking points they use to justify their fear-mongering tactics" and insisted that "one can be pro-BDS and not anti-Semitic." The BDS resolution at GW passed.
This disregard for Israeli seems to be part of a pattern.

J Street Support for The Iran Deal

o  In 2009, long before there ever was an Iran Deal, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and founder of J Street, co-wrote an article, How Diplomacy with Iran Can Succeed with Trita Parsi, president of National Iranian American Council (NIAC)
o  A US District Court found that the work of NIAC president and founder Tritra Parsi was "not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the [Iran] regime."
o  J Street was paid $576 million by Soros' Ploughshares Fund to advocate on behalf of the Iran Deal
o  In the months leading up to the Iran Deal, Ben-Ami was a frequent visitor to the White House, where he met with Ben Rhodes and with Morton Halperin, the Senior Advisor for the George Soros' Open Society Institute.
o  J Street put up a website defending the Iran Deal without any hesitation about possible consequences or dangers for Israel
photo
Jeremy Ben-Ami. Credit: Joe Mabel

J Street Support for Democrats Only

Last month, I wrote about Judging J-Street By The Candidates They Support, that J Street consistently supports Democratic candidates over Republican ones -- as if they were the only ones who supported Israel. This was true in 2010 through 2016.
I just found a list from 2008 in a J Street report

There actually are Republican candidates listed here: 2 out of 41.
One of them, Representative Charles Boustany, voted against a Congressional resolution to neither endorse nor consider the Goldstone Report. But on the other hand, in 2009 Boustany distanced himself from J Street, writing:
Unfortunately, within a few years of J Street’s establishment, I came to the realization that I had been deliberately misled and in a one instance lied to by the senior leadership of the organization. I refuse to work with any group that conducts itself in this manner.
According to his spokesman Paul Coussan, Boustany was put off by J Street lying about the money it received from George Soros.

Geoff Davis, the other Republican backed by J Street, was supposed to appear on a panel at a J Street Conference but did not show up.

At the same time, it was reported that a number of other Congressmen also distanced themselves from J Street:
The names of Reps. John Salazar (CO-03) and Ed Towns (NY-10) have been scrubbed from the list of congressmen serving on the host committee for J Street's inaugural conference. That brings to ten the number of congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, senators and representatives, who have bailed on J Street after learning that, contrary to their promotional materials, they are not a pro-Israel group...
o  Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
o  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
o  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
o  Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)
o  Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
o  Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR)
o  Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)
o  Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
o  Rep. John Salazar (D-CO)
o  Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY)
Since then, J Street has had the last laugh, gaining in legitimacy.  But the fact remains that it has done so by openly declaring itself the "blocking back" for Obama and aligning itself with policies and groups that do not act in Israel's best interest, and by limiting itself to supporting only Democrats.

J Street Support for The Goldstone Report

I've noted in earlier posts that Jeremy Ben-Ami claimed that J Street was "refusing to embrace" the Goldstone Report.
o  In fact, Mort Halperin on the J Street advisory council also wrote the letter that Goldstone circulated as his own on Capitol Hill last year, defending his anti-Israel report against a House resolution condemning it. This is the same Halperin, mentioned above, who was the Senior Advisor for the George Soros' Open Society Institute.
o  J Street went so far as to facilitate visits for Goldstone to the Hill. Ben Ami said Goldstone met only 2 or 3 Congressmen; Goldstone said it was 10 or 12.
As a side note, in the same October 2009 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for Atlantic Magazine where Ben-Ami claimed not to support the Goldstone Report, he also referred to "Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups that are consistently upset with us for backing Howard Berman's [Iran] sanctions plan." [emphasis added]

Earlier, in May of that year, J Street came out with a press release, praising Berman for supporting Obama's plan to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran: "As Chairman Berman stated, the Administration should be given reasonable time to pursue serious and tough diplomacy with Iran." Seeing that J Street was already aligning themselves with NIAC, one has to wonder just how tough J Street thought that diplomacy should be.

Where Is All This Leading?

In a recent article, Caroline Glick notes the growing influence of identity politics in the Democratic Party, and what it means for Israel:
Obama advanced policies and positions that empowered the radicals at the expense of the moderates.
Obama’s hostility towards Israel, his repeated intimations that Israel is a colonialist outpost while the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land of Israel were part and parcel of his across-the-board effort to enable the radical Left to take over the party. Obama’s efforts laid the groundwork for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the party’s presidential primaries. It also set the stage for the rise of radical leaders like Congressman Keith Ellison and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the post-Obama Democratic party.
The left wing of the Democratic Party is clearly gaining influence, and J Street is part of that.
But to the degree that it has backed Obama, and continues to support how he framed the Middle East, J Street undermines Israel.

J Street's refusal to condemn BDS, except as a tool in the hands of the "right-wing"; its association with the likes of Soros and NIAC in supporting the Iran Deal; J Street's backing only for Democrats;  its support for the clearly one-sided Goldstone Report and most recently J Street's support of the narrative of the "Great March of Return -- these positions do nothing to support Israel.

There are many ways to support Israel, and no one says you cannot criticize it -- but the actions J Street takes demonize Israel and affect Israeli security.

In 2009, William Daroff, the Washington director of the Jewish Federations of North America told JTA that J Street was developing "better PR tactics", such as condemning Iran's Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust -- but:
these were easy calls. J Street, he said, has not yet defended Israel when it is unpopular to do so.
Don't hold your breath.

At the time, Daroff wondered aloud, "when and if the Obama administration shifts direction, would J Street still be relevant?”

J Street has proven that it is capable of staying relevant.

Just not relevant to the survival of Israel





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Friday, June 29, 2018

From Ian:

In Menachem Begin’s Rise, Lessons for the #Resistance to Trump
No one saw him coming.

Certainly not the nation’s entrenched political class: To them, he was one part clown and one part petty tyrant. They mocked his hyperbolic way of speaking—to him, everything, from his supporters to his family, was very, very great, the best, the most—and warned that if he somehow got elected, it would be the end of democracy. But they didn’t really think he could win, so they continued to campaign at a leisurely pace and rely on the sycophantic media to present their candidate as inevitable.

He, on the other hand, campaigned furiously. Knowing that the press had it in for him, he set up a series of mass rallies all over the country. His fans came out in droves to see him. They were working class folks, and they felt that the elites had pushed them around for too long. In him, they found an unlikely messiah: He wasn’t of them, but he seemed to understand their frustrations and, most important, offer them some sort of nostalgic promise. He could make the nation great again.

Besides, the rallies were such good fun! He was funnier than anyone ever gave him credit for, and he mocked his political rivals mercilessly, commenting on their looks and ridiculing their weaknesses. Still, no one seemed too worried: There was no way, they thought, that Menachem Begin could really win the election.

But on May 17, 1977, he did, sending Israel’s upper crust into a tailspin. Anyone who wants to understand the current American political moment would do well to study Begin, who began his political life as a boogeyman and ended it as one of the greatest leaders in the nation’s history.
Ben Shapiro: How Trump Haters End Up Helping Trump
Perhaps those cheering such extreme rhetoric think they’re doing a world of good. In truth, their hatred for Trump, extended to his supporters, is actually emboldening Trump and strengthening his base of support. Even those of us uncomfortable with Trump’s character aren’t likely to side with Waters or crowds shouting down Cabinet secretaries eating dinner. Nor are we likely to go along with labeling Trumpian immigration policy Nazi-like — particularly without any serious historical references, and combined with on-the-ground activism that sometimes looks like a fair bit like brownshirt thuggery. Last week, George Will called on Republicans to vote for Democrats in order to check Trump — but no self-respecting Republican is going to vote for the people who call them Nazis and who avoid making serious arguments in favor of shouting about Orange Hitler.

The great irony is that Trump is an unpopular president by any objective measure — he’s spent his entire presidency hovering around 40 percent, despite a booming economy and a dearth of foreign crises. All the left would have to do to win over independents and disenchanted Republicans is provide some semblance of stability and decency. Instead, hatred for Trump has driven the left to polarization — and that polarization is forcing the same binary choice that led to Trump’s presidency in the first place. Trump hatred has led to disproportionate, irrational responses that have pushed people into his corner. These unhinged attacks against Trump don’t defeat Trump. They strengthen him.

Caroline Glick: The Grand Bazaar, AMIA and Lockerbie
News coverage of the large and growing anti-regime protests in Iran this week has included warnings by Iran “experts” insisting that the vocal support the protesters are receiving on social media from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is counterproductive.

Israeli and US statements of support for the Iranian people and their desire to rid themselves of the regime that oppresses them will only weaken them, experts warn. But several counter-indications make clear that these warnings should be disregarded.

In 2009, when millions of Iranians took to the streets in the Green Revolution, then-US president Barack Obama refused to support them. Like today’s experts, Obama argued that it would be counterproductive for the US to support the protesters as they demanded the overthrow of the regime that had just stolen the presidential election. Obama claimed that the US is so hated that the regime would use its support of the protesters to discredit the demonstrations.

In the event, Obama’s silence demoralized the revolutionaries who asked again and again why he refused to stand with them. Perhaps more importantly, by refusing to stand for the men and women of Iran who risked death to stand up to America’s bitter enemy, Obama gave Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his henchmen a green light to brutally repress the revolution. Which is exactly what they proceeded to do with nary a whimper of protest from the Obama White House.

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 Erdoğan 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.




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