Showing posts with label President Biden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Biden. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 14, 2024




Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Joe Biden is on the prowl, looking for “violent settlers” in the “West Bank,” the latter a made-up name comprising part of a city, and two distinct territories lumped together for administrative purposes. Neither the city (Jerusalem), nor the territories (Judea and Samaria) are located on a river bank, while actual “settler violence,” is a rare bird, indeed, and is handled by Israel itself, which has no problem meting out severe punishment when it deems such actions necessary. Not that Joe cares.

For Joe, the geographic distinctions don’t matter a whit. Nor does the fact that “settler violence” is so uncommon as to be almost nonexistent, and that it’s not America’s place to punish the supposed criminals of a sovereign ally, an insult of the highest magnitude.

No, Joe doesn’t care about the facts. He cares only about doing the bidding of the Squad, the anti-Israel protesters, the State Department, the UN, his handlers, and of course, the voters. It is, after all, an election year. And if the people hate Israel, and by extension, the Jews, by gum, Joe is going after them. His excuse? “Violent settlers” or more to the point, violent Israeli settlers (cough cough Jews) threaten the United States.

This is no hyperbole, Biden’s “Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions on Persons Undermining Peace, Security, and Stability in the West Bank” issued February 1, declares “settler violence” a “national emergency.” (emphasis added)

 I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find that the situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.  These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom.  They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.  For these reasons, these actions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.  I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.

How many of the people who read Biden’s executive order were completely unaware of the fact that the “West Bank” includes part of Jerusalem? For that matter, how many people who read Biden’s executive order are cognizant of the fact that not only is “East Jerusalem” not on a river bank, it is also not separate from the rest of Jerusalem.

From Proofread Now:

When words like northern, southern, eastern, and western precede a place name, they are not ordinarily capitalized, because they merely indicate general location within a region. However, when these words are actually part of the place name, they must be capitalized.

The city of Jerusalem is a single, unified city under Israeli sovereignty, and it is Israel’s capital. Hence there is no such thing as “East” Jerusalem. But the Arabs say there is and that it belongs to them, and so it has become another invented paradigm forced down the throat of a sovereign nation and American ally by the enemy who threatens that sovereign nation (Israel) from within and without, with American support.

Here it bears mention that the Western Wall is located in this part of Jerusalem, as is of course, the Temple Mount, the holiest of holy Jewish sites. Just as a dog marks his territory by urinating there, so too the Arabs marked this holy Jewish territory “Muslim,” by building a mosque on a site holy only to the Jewish people. The world is only too happy to fall in with the idea of dispossessing the hated Jews from their holy sites, their holy city, and the Holy Land. So too, the world is content to go along with the fiction of an “East Jerusalem” “occupied” by "European" Jews.

Despite the alarmist rhetoric employed by Biden in his executive order, there are no “high levels of extremist settler violence.” Biden, in fact, could only locate an initial four Jews to punish—that is to say, four Jews that match his personal definition of “violent settlers.” Many Israelis are now wondering if they are next on the chopping block.

What is meant by “forced displacement of people and villages and property destruction?” Does “forced displacement of people and villages” refer to Arabs who fled of their own volition in 1948 or 1967, or perhaps to the Arab squatter evicted by a Jewish landlord for nonpayment of rent? Does the building of the Western Wall plaza or the public restrooms placed there by Israeli authorities for the convenience of visitors of all faiths who come to pray at the Wall, “property destruction?” Or is that it the little corner market in the Jewish Quarter where people buy eggs and milk?

Where are these “high levels of extremist settler violence,” and for that matter, what constitutes “settler violence?” The better question is what doesn’t? For one thing, the Biden administration relies on the UN for its facts and figures in this regard, a body not known for its philosemitism. What sort of facts and figures have been disseminated by this “august” body?

From Amit Segal at Ynet:

 [When] the details on settler violence are examined thoroughly it seems like there isn’t much violence, nor much settlers. Dr. Michael Wolfowicz, a criminology researcher at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law, received the data from the UN.

At first glance, it's horrifying: between 2016 and 2022, there were no less than 5,656 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians. But delving into the numbers reveals that 1,600 of them took place in Jerusalem, with almost all of them involving Jews entering the Temple Mount or clashes between the police and Muslims who acted violently in the area.

After further filtering, there were 2,500 incidents that describe property damage or assault, but they include, for example, a terror attack in which a Palestinian terrorist attacked Jews and was neutralized. On April 8, 2018, Mahmoud Abedel Karim Marshoud attempted to stab Israeli civilians near Ma’ale Adumim. He was neutralized and succumbed to his injuries the next day. The UN reported two violent incidents following this: on April 8, a shooting at a Palestinian, and on April 9, a killing.

On July 26, 2018, Yotam Ovadia, 30, was murdered by a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist who stabbed him. Here too, according to the UN, the fact Ovadia neutralized the terrorists was classified as settler violence. The same goes for a stabbing attack in Mount Hebron, another one in Yitzhar, and an incident where Arab rioters clashed with security forces at Joseph's Tomb.

Even a car accident in which a settler hit a Palestinian was classified as violence. After filtering all of these, we’re left with about 20 violent incidents in a month, most of them being cases of mutual violence, and some reported only by Palestinian sources without being verified.

Even if all of them are accurate, here's a relevant comparison: according to the IDF, in 2019-2022 alone, there were 25,257 incidents of Palestinian attacks against Jewish settlers . . .

. . . The exaggeration of settler violence from a limited phenomenon to a widespread issue is designed to appease the world's conscience, in a strange symmetry, for the assistance it provides Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists.

In Israel, this is intended to serve the goal of expelling Jewish settlers from the West Bank and establishing a Palestinian state.

But there’s worse. It seems that the UN has compiled a list of Jews who have visited the Temple Mount, which as noted above, is located in fictitious “East Jerusalem” within the fictitious “West Bank." The Jewish Press has the report:

Hakol Hayehudi reporter Elchanan Groner on Thursday presented a UN Excel sheet depicting Jewish visits to the Temple Mount as violent incidents.

As can clearly be seen for this batch from 2019, the Incident Description is always, “Israeli settlers and other groups, accompanied by Israeli forces, entered and toured the yards of Al Aqsa Mosque compound.” The source is always “other” or UNRWA, and the region is described as “West Bank.”

Further down, the Jewish Press elaborates on the Wolfowicz report:

According to the IDF, between 2019 and 2022, there were 25,257 instances of PA Arab assaults on Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (without Jerusalem), with more than 20,000 incidents of stone-throwing, about 4,000 Molotov cocktails, about 400 shooting attacks, and more than 50 stabbing attacks. And the annual figure rose much higher in 2023. However, according to the UN reports on the same period, there were only 1,935 Arab-on-Jew assaults in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.

It turns out that many of these Arab-on-Jew attacks were recorded by the UN as… “settler violence” . . . 

 . . . It can be cautiously estimated that only about 35% of the reported incidents actually describe events in which there are settlers and violence, and they too have not been examined, and include questionable descriptions such as car accidents (a settler ran over a PA Arab child), or Arabs who “ran away from settlers” and fell and hurt themselves while running.

When word of the executive order came out, like many other Israelis, I wondered whether and/or how this might apply to me and to my family members. I’ve written here about my one-time trip to the Temple Mount in 2017, during a brief Arab boycott of the site. The Arabs had attacked and killed two (Bedouin) policemen and wounded a third. Israel installed metal detectors, and the Arabs decided that this was some kind of violation of their “sovereignty” over the Mount.

As a result, I seized the chance to go while there were no Arabs to curse, spit, and throw garbage at me. I took a quick tour—Jews aren’t allowed to linger or pray—and left. But when Jews visit the Mount, they are taken to a waiting area, and are required to turn in their ID booklets. There’s a wait, while security takes down your info and likely runs it through a computer to make sure you’re not a threat. Only then are you allowed up.

Did the UN access this information? Will I now be deemed by the Biden administration, a “violent settler,” my ability to visit relatives in the States, curtailed?

Can my bank accounts be frozen? I’m employed by an Israeli company. But my bank account has branches in the US.

What about mein son the (IDF) officer and my other soldier sons who served in Judea and Samaria?

From a second Jewish Press report:

According to an internal report of Israel’s foreign ministry, the Biden administration is preparing to impose sanctions on IDF officers and soldiers who serve in Judea and Samaria, Kan11 News reported Friday night. The report cites a series of claims that have been submitted to the administration against the conduct of IDF units in the area.

The report cites a US warning that if the military attorney’s office does not submit answers to the administration’s inquiries in less than 60 days, sanctions would be imposed against IDF soldiers, including commanders. In addition, the report shows that the Biden administration warned Israel many times about the lack of enforcement against “settler violence,” and Israel’s answers have been unsatisfactory.

In addition to all my other supposed sins, I live (and work) in Judea. Will my mere presence in the “West Bank” that isn’t even a river bank at some point be deemed “settler violence?” Is residing in my rented apartment considered displacement, dispossession, and destruction? 

If you ask the UN, the Red Cross, Hamas, Abbas, Qatar, et al., it most definitely is, which makes me a horrible person just for waking up in my bed, getting dressed, and washing the breakfast dishes at the sink each morning, even though no Arab ever lived here in this home or on the property on which it stands. To the Biden administration, I’m an extremist and violent criminal who should be kept from my own money and isolated from my family abroad.

But on the bright side of things, here's how much I care:





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Wednesday, November 01, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

How much money has the United States given to Iran over the years, either as outright gifts, or through the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets and revenues? The exact amount may be impossible to determine, but the thawing of $6b in Iranian revenues a month before the Hamas atrocities in Israel, obligates us to look closer and ask hard questions. How much money are we talking about? Was the latest thaw a greenlight to Iran to do as it wished with Israel? Which presidents gave money to Iran and why did so many Jewish Americans vote for them?

A recent Newsweek “fact check” article attempts to pin down the exact amount of money that flowed to Iran from the Obama administration. The article is slanted, focused on the irrelevant fact that at least much of the money was not a gift because it already belonged to Iran, and stressing that conditions had been placed on how the money could be spent (emphasis added):

As tensions simmer, conservative commentators shared claims that President Barack Obama's administration had given $150 billion to Iran, effectively, they argued, funding Hamas.

A post on X by Jack Posobiec, posted on October 16, 2023, referenced a Charlie Kirk tweet from September 11, 2015, which stated "Iran funds Hamas. Hamas kills Americans and Jews. Now we give Iran $150 billion. Where do you think that money will go? #IranDeal"

Posobiec wrote "Charlie warned us and now people are mad at him."

Kirk, founder of conservative student group Turning Point USA, was likely referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which granted Iran access to frozen assets.

This was not funding given to Iran. The amount quoted refers to foreign assets that belonged to Iran and were frozen by sanctions imposed to impede its nuclear program. The JCPOA was also an international agreement between Iran and a number of major world powers, including the U.S.

Despite the facts of this "fact-checking" article, there’s always a workaround. Two things can be true at one and the same time. Perhaps the thawed Iranian foreign assets could not be used to fund terror, but there was zero reason to imagine that a similar amount of money could not be drawn from elsewhere, for example from schools, hospitals, and government subsidies for healthcare to fund the Iranian terror machine. Then all Iran has to do is use its unfrozen assets to make up the difference, and voilà—no thawed assets were used to fund Iranian terror!

The Iranian windfall may not have paid for nuclear weapons production or to sponsor its proxy Hamas, but it might as well have done so, because here is another fact: Money can always be shifted around to balance a budget and make things work. That’s because money is fungible:

Back in 2015, Charlie Kirk, as cited by Newsweek, said the United States, under President Obama, gave Iran $150b. How did Kirk arrive at this figure? Does he have some kind of inside track? Nope. Kirk was only repeating the words from the man himself, Barack Obama:

How much these assets were worth has not been released, but $150 billion is the highest estimate provided by U.S. officials. The figure was mentioned in passing by Obama in an interview with The Atlantic in 2015, when questioned where the money could end up.

"The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion?" Obama said.

Was the $150b referenced by Obama meant as an exaggerated hypothetical? It seems unlikely. If this astronomical sum had been far off the mark of the thawed Iranian foreign assets, surely the former president would have added context. He might have said, for example, “Not that the Iranian revenues we freed came to anything near that amount.”

Newsweek goes on to offer the reader other estimates for the Obama-thawed Iranian funds beginning with the far lower figures cited by a corrupt Iranian bank official:

In 2015, the former governor of Iran's central bank, Valiollah Seif, said in a state television address that the value of the frozen assets had been exaggerated.

Seif was sentenced in 2021 to 10 years in prison on corruption charges, reported Reuters.

The former official said that there were $29 billion of unlockable assets: $23 billion in foreign exchange that belonged to the bank and $6 billion of the Tehran government's money, The Times of Israel and Arabic news channel Al Arabiya reported in July 2015. The $29 billion Seif quoted was also reported by The New York Times.

Further figures are cited from a variety of sources to suggest that we are, indeed, speaking of much lower sums, which anyway, cannot be accessed by Iran, and certainly not for the purpose of funding terror:

Voice of America reported in January 2016, after the deal was signed, quotes from Seif saying Iran had gained access to $32 billion in assets.

Then U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress in July 2015 that Iran gained access to $56 billion via the agreement, a fact check by PolitiFact in 2018 noted.

In an August 2015 written testimony, Adam J. Szubin, then-acting Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that while estimates suggested the Central Bank of Iran had foreign exchange assets between $100 billion to $125 billion, the usable "liquid assets" after sanctions were lifted would be around $50 billion.

Newsweek wraps things up by telling us unequivocally that the U.S. did not give Iran $150b in 2015, and anyway, the not-a-gift was at no cost to the American people:

False.

The U.S. did not "give" $150 billion to Iran in 2015. In 2015, as part of an international deal with Iran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agreed to cut back on nuclear enrichment programs in exchange for the unfreezing of its own assets.

The U.S. taxpayer paid nothing toward this, as might be implied by the post, and the value of the assets was said by some, including the U.S. Treasury, to be less than $150 billion.

Even should we stipulate that the non-gift to Iran was far less than $150b, Newsweek leaves out a most salient, and quite relevant fact. In addition to thawing Iranian revenues, Obama gave Iran $1.8 billion in cash, from The Hill, back in 2020:

Iran is indeed a dangerous terrorist state that not only has a powerful standing army, air force, navy and advanced weapons systems — including ballistic missiles and a growing space program — but also controls multiple proxy terrorist organizations responsible for killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

Included on that list of victims are thousands of American military personnel and contractors.

These were facts that former President Obama knew when he deliberately chose a policy of appeasement and cash payoffs instead of strength and accountability as the way to deal with Iran.

President Trump spelled this out in no uncertain terms on Wednesday when he addressed the nation while seeking to dial down the imminent threat Iran may pose to our nation, the Middle East and the world.

Said the president in part, “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013 and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. … Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

As we have seen and heard, some — especially Democrats, their allies in the media and Obama supporters — chose to challenge or quibble with Trump’s statement. That said, [author Douglas Mackinnon] spoke with a former senior intelligence official who said that much of the $1.8 billion cash payoff from the Obama administration was used explicitly to fund terrorism as an additional “screw you” from the leaders of Iran — including Soleimani —  to the United States. The rest of the money, [Mackinnon’s] source believes, ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt Iranian leaders and terrorists.

This money was not not-a-gift Iranian monies thawed, but an actual gift, or rather, according to Mackinnon, a payoff Obama thought he could hide from the public (emphasis added):

The cash payment authorized by Obama is one of the most disgraceful and shameful “negotiations” in the history of our nation. It was a payment the Obama White House first denied, then ignored and then grudgingly acknowledged.

We paid in cash, but not U.S. currency. Wary of using U.S. bills for a variety of reasons involving concealment, the Obama White House had the money converted to untraceable Euros, Swiss francs, and other foreign currencies. More troubling than those initial denials and deceptions was the fact that $400 million of that all-cash payment was used to pay a ransom to the government of Iran for the release of four American prisoners, in violation of standing U.S. policy.

In a pathetic attempt to hide behind semantics, the Obama administration finally did acknowledge that $400 million was delayed as “leverage” until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran.

While the Obama White House hid from the true definition of the word “leverage,” Iran’s state-run media was more than happy to brag that Iran had just forced the United States to pay a ransom.

Thawing Iranian revenues is one thing, even to the tune of $150b, but from where, you might reasonably ask, did Obama get $1.8b in cash? Was this gift on the taxpayer’s dime? Mackinnon gives us the skinny:

What many Americans don’t realize is that the Obama White House took the ransom money from something called the “Judgment Fund,” which is administered by the Treasury. That little-known account is entirely paid for by American taxpayers and was set up in such a way that Obama could bypass congressional approval to pay the cash to Iran.

Those who continually praise and defend Obama often describe him as “brilliant.” There is no doubt the former president is an intelligent person, certainly bright enough to realize — and admit, at least to himself — that the cash he turned over to the murderous regime leading Iran to ruin was not used for altruistic purposes.

Any honest assessment would conclude that at least part of that secretive, massive payment was used to finance terrorist attacks against Americans, our allies and innocent civilians . . .

 . . . For that reason, Obama should apologize for the thousands wounded and killed in terrorist attacks since Iran took possession of that tainted cash. That is his debt to pay.

In 2021, CNN reduced the amount of the Obama cash gift to Iran from $1.8b to “about $1.7b”. We also learn that in 2021, there was a $7b thaw in the works, suspiciously close to the $6b that President Biden unfroze in September:

Then-President Barack Obama faced steep opposition from Republicans when it was revealed that his administration had transferred about $1.7 billion to Iran in early 2016 . . .

 . . . Pro-Iranian media reported last weekend that the US had agreed to unfreeze $7 billion in Iranian funds and arrange a prisoner swap as part of the negotiations, but the State Department rejected the prisoner swap reports as false and a senior official told reporters on Thursday that those responsible for the leak were guilty of “unspeakable cruelty.” The department did not weigh in on the reports that the US would unfreeze funds, but a source briefed on the talks said the $7 billion figure was incorrect.

The White House is at the same time facing pressure to tread cautiously from Israel, which sent a delegation to Washington last week to discuss, among other things, the ongoing Iran deal talks. In a brief meeting with Biden last week, Israeli top intelligence official Yossi Cohen reiterated what Israel has been saying publicly, said one person familiar with the meeting: namely, that it believes Iran cannot be trusted and that the US should not return to the nuclear deal.

Biden reiterated his commitment to the US-Israel relationship, the person said, and reassured Cohen that the US views a return to the deal only as a jumping-off point for further discussions about lengthening and strengthening its terms, to ultimately include limits on other areas of Iran’s malign behavior in the region.

Going back to the issue of irrelevant facts and the echo chamber, the Newsweek article cited earlier managed to side-step the issue of Obama’s $1.8b cash payments to Iran. It did so by pushing a flurry of irrelevant facts on the reader: that the 2015 money was not a gift; that it was nowhere near $150b, and the money was not used to directly fund terror. A US News article piles on further irrelevant facts to obscure the truth, this time regarding the recent $6b in Iranian revenues thawed by Biden one month before the October 7 Hamas terror attack.

We are told that no one serious believes the $6b was used for the attack on Israel (so what—money is fungible); the attack was long in the planning (so what—they planned it a long time ago but needed the money to make it happen); and there is “no evidence” that Iran funded the attack because Iran denies responsibility (as if Iran were a trustworthy source to be believed in regard to whether or not it funded Hamas):

No serious observer believes the money ordered released by the administration – accumulated oil revenue withheld from Tehran under a Trump administration financial restriction – was used for that purpose. Iran is known to play a major role in funding, supporting and training the militant group and has for decades, but U.S. officials have said early intelligence does not indicate Iran helped Hamas plan, train or otherwise carry out the assault and added that it appeared to have taken some senior Iranian leaders by surprise. While a Hamas spokesman told the BBC that Iran did assist in the attack, officials in Tehran have denied responsibility while praising the outcome. So any direct link remains tenuous.

With regard to the money, planning of the sophisticated operation appears to have been underway for far longer than the funds were available to Iran, for one thing. For another, Treasury Department controls mandate that the funds cannot be drawn down by Iran for anything other than humanitarian needs provided by third-party vendors. But mostly – as the administration’s one-note response emphasizes at every turn – the most obvious indication it wasn’t used for the attack was because Iran hasn’t yet touched the money after it was sent from South Korea to a bank in Qatar.

“None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Thursday, speaking from Tel Aviv, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a multi-country diplomatic deployment across the Middle East.

Instead of focusing on the $1.8b cash payment (or $1.7b as CNN would have it), Mark Langfan, in 2020, did the math for us on the $150b figure cited by Obama in the Atlantic interview. At the same time, Langfan appears to place the onus for this dirty “deal” on then Vice President Biden (emphasis added):

Despite the fact that VP Biden knew that the Defense Department had already conclusively found by July 9, 2015 that Iran had directly murdered a minimum 500 US soldiers with Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) in Iraq over the past seven years, a mere five days later, on July 14, 2015, VP Biden cheerled the Iran Nuclear deal that handed Iran $150 Billion dollars.

Do the math. That means that in 2015, VP Biden paid Iran $300 million for each US soldier Iran murdered.

The echo chamber is slimy. It tells us about thawed Iranian revenues, but it doesn’t tell us about the large cash gift or that the American taxpayer paid ransom to Iran. Instead, the echo chamber peppers us with irrelevant facts, smug in the belief that wool can be pulled over the eyes of the American public. The tactic has demonstrated its efficacy over the years, with Americans amplifying whatever irrelevant talking points they are supplied. Is it a case of intellectual laziness or are they simply too trusting?

Richard Goldberg, senior advisor to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Rep. Darrell Issa, instead of irrelevancies, offer us a shocking piece of information. The recent $6b not-a-gift to Iran was only the tip of the iceberg and it’s far worse than Obama with his sneaky $1.8b cash payment. As it turns out, Biden enriched Iran by more than $50b and he did it via backchannels to avoid public scrutiny:

In May, White House Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk secretly traveled to Oman to pass a message along to Iran: America will pay the Ayatollah’s price to keep Tehran from producing weapons-grade uranium. Later that month, the Sultan of Oman traveled to Iran to broker the deal while the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) — an institution subject to U.S. sanctions for its role in terror financing — unexpectedly departed for Washington.

In June, leaks to Israeli media revealed the extraordinary concessions Biden made to the Ayatollah: Iran would “stop the process of enriching uranium to high levels” in exchange for sanctions relief.

The Biden administration then issued a sanctions waiver to provide Iran with at least $10 billion frozen in Iraq – and allow the money to be deposited in Iranian bank accounts in Oman.

Unnamed officials would soon admit the U.S. had already stopped enforcing oil sanctions on Iran – tacitly approving a million barrel per day increase in exports from Iran to China and generating tens of billions in annualized revenue. By the time the administration authorized the much-discussed $6 billion from South Korea, a full-blown appeasement and enrichment effort towards Iran had been underway for months.

In effect, explain the authors, the $6b in thawed Iranian revenues was a smokescreen for a far greater cash infusion from yet another dirty president (emphasis added):

[Fixating] only on the $6 billion obscures how Biden has financed Iran’s nuclear protection racket, emboldened its murderous regime, and enabled the mullahs to focus their resources on destroying Israel, the one country conducting operations to stop Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The Biden message sent to the ayatollah is that the U.S. fears escalation and will pay any price to avoid a direct confrontation. That was a green light for Iran to activate its terror subsidiaries and commence the kind of barbaric slaughter we witnessed [on October 7th].

To add insult to injury, Biden is even now strengthening the Iranian terror machine:

While Biden’s words condemn Hamas’ heinous crimes against humanity, he continues to enrich Hamas’ parent company, Iran. And while Biden is correctly giving Israel the time, space, and resources it needs to prepare for Hamas’ destruction, he’s simultaneously giving Iran the time, space, and resources it needs to rebuild that which Israel destroys.

Having discussed the thawed, not-a-gift Iranian revenues, it makes sense to then explore how the re-imposition of sanctions by President Trump in 2018, drastically drained Iran of resources to fund its terror activities. In 2020, Lindsay Graham and Morgan Ortagus outlined Iran’s dire economic situation, and described how the lifting of sanctions by President Biden would represent a $90b bailout to Iran (emphasis added):

The JCPOA infused Iran with cash. Right before the United States reimposed sanctions in 2018, Iran’s central bank controlled more than $120 billion in foreign exchange reserves. U.S. sanctions locked tens of those billions away in escrow accounts, and financial pressure forced Iran to draw down the accounts that remained open. After only two years of the maximum pressure campaign, Iran was down to a meager $4 billion in reserves. Meanwhile, U.S. energy sanctions cut Iran’s oil exports by more than 2 million barrels per day, depriving the regime of $70 billion that typically funds its budget.

The massive reversal of fortunes left Iran with barely any economic options, and the regime was forced to cut payments to its regional terror proxies. While Iran fended off collapse, much of the rest of the Middle East breathed a sigh of relief. Several countries in the region made historic peace with one another. Progress made by the Abraham Accords—which were struck in August 2020 by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—were contagious.

Alliances with Iran threaten to undo much of the progress made.

Right away, the regime could receive a payday of around $90 billion the moment Biden ends sanctions. After all, U.S. sanctions tied up $40 billion of oil and condensate sales in Asia and the Middle East while another $50 billion in funds remain inaccessible to the regime. Meanwhile, the restoration of the JCPOA would likely reinvigorate Iran’s oil exports, adding nearly $50 billion per year to the regime’s coffers at today’s market rate. Other economic sanctions would be lifted as well, bolstering the regime’s metals and petrochemicals sectors that are crucial to funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) foreign adventures. Iran’s economy will start to grow again, and it will not take any time for the suitcases of cash to find their way to Hamas or Hezbollah.

Those billions of dollars would go a long way for the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s entire military budget has been reduced to less than $20 billion a year. But historically, Iran spent more than $16 billion supporting allies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen since 2012 and sent $700 million a year to Hezbollah.

There’s not much need for speculation regarding what Iran would use its sanctions relief for. Instead, just look to six years ago. Instead of spending funds on cancer research or infrastructure like promised, the regime’s defense budget reached record highs. The IRGC spread mayhem and death across the region, and the same thing could happen again.

Only this time, under the terms of the original JCPOA, nuclear restrictions on Iran are almost up. Within the decade, Iran will have no cap on nuclear enrichment quantity or quality, no cap on the number of centrifuge sophistication, no ban on the import and export of ballistic missiles, and the expiration of more than a dozen other prohibitions.

In 2022, Nikki Haley criticized Biden’s intention to lift the sanctions. But Haley goes further, offering a tie-in between the thawed Iranian money and Biden’s support to the PA and Hamas regimes (emphasis added): 

Haley [criticized] Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East, including Israel, where he announced a $300 million cash infusion to the Palestinian government. The Free Beacon exclusively reported last week that a large portion of this cash is funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has a history of inciting violence against Jews.

"The money has no conditions, no strings, nothing. The Palestinians can keep stoking hatred of Israel," Haley said of the renewed funding. "They can keep paying the families of terrorists, which encourages more suicide bombings. Basically, the Palestinians can use America’s money to attack America’s ally. It’s a disgrace."

In examining the events of October 7, it is important here, to consider the role played in the atrocities by Rob Malley, the recently-suspended envoy to Iran who allegedly mishandled classified material (emphasis added):

“Rob Malley deserves extensive scrutiny — yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told [the New York Post] after the Wall Street Journal reported that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned and signed off on this weekend’s atrocity that killed at least 900.

“These reports could not be more concerning, and they hint at what could be the worst State Department scandal since Alger Hiss,” Issa added.

“Malley and others created an incredibly permissive environment for Hamas, for Iran, to do all these things,” added Gabriel Noronha, a former special adviser on Iran at the State Department.

Noronha, who served under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Malley and his negotiating team “purposefully funneled billions of dollars to [Iran] through lack of sanctions enforcement and provision of sanctions relief that has given them somewhere between $50 [billion] and $80 billion over the last two and a half years.”

A senior House Republican aide told The Post that the cash influx followed an even more generous payout of $1.7 billion that the Obama administration made to Iran in 2016, eventually contributing to Saturday’s attack that triggered the Jewish state’s first declaration of war in 50 years.

In 2022, Michael Rubin said that all told, thanks to Malley, the Biden administration planned to give Tehran, in total, twice the amount of Biden’s recent “non-gift” to Iran (emphasis added):

In May 2021, Malley was offering Iran relief equivalent to $7 billion, nearly equal to the budget of Iran’s entire conventional military for 2022. As Iranian negotiators stonewalled — they have not sat down with Malley or his team but instead insist on talking through intermediaries — Malley’s team upped the ante. Today, the Biden administration appears poised to provide Tehran with $12 billion, equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s total budget at the real exchange rate. This does not include, of course, the windfall Tehran seeks to gain from increased oil sales already augmented by lack of sanctions enforcement. This fund does not include off-budget spending, such as the oil revenue directly allocated to the Revolutionary Guards or the additional billions that Iran’s national oil company allocates for national stabilization and development but in actuality flows into Revolutionary Guards’ coffers.

Should Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accept Malley’s offer, the regime will receive an infusion of over $20 billion over the following year, essentially doubling the Revolutionary Guard’s budget. To put that conservative estimate in perspective, a suicide belt costs just $1,500, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria that killed five Americans cost only $50,000.

Nor does the money now offered to Iran account for the billion-dollar ransoms that the Iranians expect for hostage releases. After all, ever since Jimmy Carter’s administration acquiesced to release Iranian funds in exchange for hostages and Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages, the Iranian regime simply seizes new hostages to use as chits in their negotiations.

Lee Smith, writing for Tablet, describes how Malley brought an Iranian agent into the State Department and the Pentagon, where she served in sensitive positions related to United States defense (emphasis added):

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails.

The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier. . .

The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

What should we make of these efforts by Presidents Obama and Biden to enrich not only Iran, but the PA and Hamas regimes in the wake of the depraved Hamas massacre of October 7? For one thing, it clarifies for us that these men, and the men who work(ed) for them, are dirty almost beyond belief. Also: they really hate Israel.

However inconvenient it is to consider who put these men in office, we must talk about this. While American Jews are a miniscule percentage of the American voting public, a large majority of them voted for Obama and Biden. They put domestic issues like healthcare ahead of Israel. They failed to register the possible impact of the JCPOA on the Jewish people and on the world at large.

The world has undergone a drastic change in the short few weeks since October 7. Pogroms now threaten Jews in Russia and in France. American college campuses have never been more dangerous for Jewish students. We are on the verge of a world war. This state of affairs is due to the machinations of Obama, Biden, and all those who ever worked for them (and voted for them).

There is a lesson to be learned here: you don’t vote for the guy who wants to give money to Iran, echo chamber notwithstanding. It doesn’t matter whose money it is, or how they propose to get it to the mullahs. The stipulations they promise to put on that money also do not matter.

It is evil to make funds available to the evil, period.

On October 21, 2012, just before Obama was reelected, I reviewed Obama’s intentions to plow through with the JCPOA and what this might mean for the world, something perhaps akin to the horrors of the Holocaust, for lack of a better description. I then asked my readers a simple question: “If you could have saved the 6 million by pulling a different lever, would you have done so?”

Eleven years later, my question is no different, even though the alternative candidate is a man reviled by the majority of Jewish American voters. “If you could have saved the Jews who were massacred on October 7th by pulling a different lever, would you have done so?”

Jewish voting patterns. The middle column represents the percent of Jewish votes received by each candidate (screenshot from the Virtual Jewish Library)

This writer is not afraid to stipulate that Trump is an unpresidential ass. I don’t like his crassness and the way he insults his competition. I don’t like the way he speaks about the Jewish people, and I don’t like what he says about my prime minister. In spite of all this, I know that that there’s always a trade-off: Trump would never have given money to Iran, or unfrozen its revenues.

In fact, it was Trump who re-imposed the sanctions on Iran. The Iranian war machine was nearly bankrupt when Biden assumed office. The evidence leads to an obvious conclusion: Had Donald Trump won the election, the events of October 7th would not have occurred.

And I hate like hell that my prediction of a Holocaust came true. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

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Wednesday, October 25, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On or around September 7, President Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. One month later, there was a massacre in Israel, sponsored by Iran. No less than a Hamas spokesman affirmed that Iran lent its assistance to Hamas as its proxy to murder Jews.

Was Biden’s generosity to Iran in September responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas in October? While White House officials say that none of the $6b went to Hamas, they have yet to relate to accusations that Biden’s munificence served as a green light to Iran to do what it always says it will do: murder Jews.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking from Tel Aviv, pretended that money was not fungible. The money, he said, had been sent from South Korea to a Qatari bank, and Iran hadn’t even had a chance to touch it, yet. “None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” said Blinken to Netanyahu during his diplomatic blitz of the Middle East in the wake of the atrocities.

Yes, dummy. We know that. But when there’s money in your future, you can take money from elsewhere to fund what you like. Iran likes to kill Jews. Tony Blinken knows this, because in reality, Blinken is no dummy. He is, however, a Biden hack.

Look (as Biden likes to say), it’s called “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” While Iran could not give the $6b straight into the hands of Hamas, there’s always a workaround. It’s called creative accounting. You take money away from a hospital or a school, whatever, and send it to Hamas. Wherever Iran took the money from, it used it to fund the massacre, secure in the knowledge that there would be $6b to cover the difference.

This really is not complicated, yet we can expect Blinken will continue to deliver the same unsatisfactory message each time he is called upon to answer for the October 7th war crimes. These were acts of war against Israel, against America and others, with various nationals among the hostages. What is now happening was brought to us by Iran, directly after they received a windfall from Joe.

Yes, we know the $6b is not a gift. We know that the money technically belongs to Iran. This is, however, an irrelevant factoid. Funds have been freed, released to madmen. Whether the money is a gift or just a case of restoring it to its rightful owner “in good faith,” matters not. The end result is the same: money in the pocket to buy weapons and pay savages to kill Jews.

One could write off the $6b as a miscalculation, a mistake by the Biden Administration. But not really. Joe Biden has been around a long time (cough). He has an equally lengthy history of browbeating and bullying Israel’s leaders, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the relevant actors in the region. President Biden knows that Iran and Hamas are evil. And he knows that Israel is not.

Israel is Joe Biden’s sacrificial lamb. Perhaps Biden reasons that everyone would like the Jews to be gone. Whatever his excuse, it is Joe Biden who strengthened the hand that fed us tragedy, in his final coup de grâce to the Jews.  

We may never know all the ways in which Biden tied Israel’s hands to keep the Jewish State from defending itself. We don’t know what went on between Biden and Netanyahu behind the scenes. Rest assured, however, that Joe is using everything at his disposal to stall Israel as long as he can, from launching its inevitable ground incursion into Gaza. In so doing, Biden continues to strengthen the hand of the enemy. Each day that passes without the ground incursion gives the enemies of Israel that much more time to prepare, more time to get ready to slaughter the Jews (they will be sorry they tried).

We can see some of what Biden is doing against Israel, for example, forcing Israel to allow aid to go through to the “innocent people of Gaza,” unimpeded. Joe Biden himself is providing $100m to Gaza for humanitarian aid.

What does it mean to give $100m to “Gaza?” It means to give $100m to Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. The humanitarian aid, as well, is the opposite of that. Sure, the hundred mil is ostensibly to be used only for things like water, food, and electricity, but that will never happen. Thanks to yet more “creative accounting,” the money will not go to civilians. The $100m is right now literally funding Hamas, funding murder and inciting the world to war—whether we can see the actual transactions, or not.

Here too, a Biden hack offers an irrelevant response to criticism of Biden for sending aid and comfort to the enemy. This time it is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman who pretends that money is not fungible. "Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine," says Miller.

Habibi, you are not fooling us. The hundred mil can only go to Hamas, the government of Gaza. And even if this filthy lucre is channeled through UNRWA, it will still go to Hamas. One way or another, wherever it lands in Gaza, that $100m will be lining the pockets of Hamas’ worst, the dutiful proxies of Iran.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, March 13, 2023

There has been a great deal of analysis about the Chinese-brokered improvement of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. 


The agreement was seen as a major diplomatic triumph for China, coming as Gulf Arab states perceive the United States as winding down its involvement in the Middle East.

“I think it is a sign that China is increasingly confident in taking a more assertive role in the Middle East,” said Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, an Indonesian academic affiliated with the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

China’s economic interests increasingly draw it into conflicts far from its shores. It’s by far the biggest customer for Middle Eastern energy exports, while the U.S. has reduced its need for imports as the country shifts toward energy independence.

Chinese officials have long argued that Beijing should play a more active role in the region, said June Teufel Dreyer, a political scientist at the University of Miami specializing in Chinese politics.

Meanwhile, U.S.-Saudi frictions have created “a vacuum that Beijing was happy to step into,” Dreyer said.
Absurdly, the Chinese Foreign Ministry published a statement claiming that Beijing “pursues no selfish interest whatsoever..”

Clearly, this is all about Chinese interests - in sidelining the US as a power broker in the Middle East, in extending its own power and influence - solidifying its status as a superpower.

Where does Israel fit in this Chinese calculus? Apparently, as an obstacle.

On Saturday, PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas hosted a delegation headed by the Chinese special envoy for the Middle East, Zhai Jun.
The President referred to the historical relations between China and Palestine, and the Palestinian leadership's keenness to strengthen and develop them for the benefit of the two friendly countries, appreciating the support provided by China to the Palestinian people and their just cause in all fields, stressing that Palestine will remain supportive of China in international forums despite all pressures .

In turn, the Chinese special envoy affirmed the firm and principled Chinese position in support of the Palestinian people and their just cause, and that China, whether during its presence in the UN Security Council or in all forums in which it is present, will remain supportive of the Palestinian people's right to freedom and independence..
As far as I can tell, Zhai Jun is not visiting Israel. He last visited a year ago and briefly said that while China and Israel do not agree about Iran, China "understands" Israel's concerns.

Both China and Israel seek to expand their influence in the region, and in that sense they are rivals - and China is the 900 pound panda. 

In 2021, Zhai Jun published a manifesto of sorts describing China's goals for the Middle East: "China and Middle Eastern Countries: Towards a Brighter Shared Future."  Israel is barely mentioned., only named in the 2,800 word article as an afterthought: "China has by far established 14 strategic partnerships with regional countries and the League of Arab States, and an innovative comprehensive partnership with Israel, adding strong vitality to the friendship and cooperation between the two sides."

Even when the document discusses the moribund peace process, it manages to avoid mentioning Israel by name:
In 2002, the Chinese government appointed its first Special Envoy for the Middle East. Over the past 18 years, five successive special envoys have made more than one hundred trips to the Middle East to promote peace talks and worked tirelessly for resolving the question of Palestine and other issues in the region. China’s Special Envoy for Syria and Ambassador for China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) Affairs, two roles created later, have also conducted shuttle diplomacy and contributed their wisdom to resolve relevant hotspot issues. This is another example of how China upholds justice and assumes responsibility as a major country. Such efforts have been widely applauded and supported by the parties concerned.   
China sees an opportunity to exploit the US incompetence in the region under the Obama and Biden administrations and it is exploiting it. Israel is at best a distraction and at worst an enemy in Chinese ambitions to dominate the region economically and diplomatically. 





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Tuesday, February 14, 2023


Arafat got the ball rolling.

In a 1997 online article on Azure, Yoram Hazony describes a 1996 festival staged by Arafat's Ministry of Culture, in honor of Ba'al:

Arab youths dressed in robes bearing ancient Canaanite figures brandished torches as they danced about the town square, packed with officials of the PLO’s administration and security services...On the stone stage in the middle of the square, a dramatic passion was acted out, with the Ba’al, god of the heavens and fertility in the pantheon of the ancient Canaanites, heroically struggling against Mut, god of the underworld...the narrator took the opportunity to pour praise on the loyal Palestinian-Canaanite nations, the Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites and Perizzites, which had fought at his side in the battle against the Hebrew invaders from across the Jordan.
And Arafat kept the ball rolling. On March 30, 2000, Arafat declared during a 'Land Day' speech:
Our forefathers, the Canaanites and Jebusites, built the cities and planted the land; they built the monumental city of Bir Salim [Jerusalem]…

The previous year, his advisor and minister for Jerusalem affairs, Faisal Husseini, said in an interview with New York Times Magazine:

I am a Palestinian. I am a descendant of the Jebusites, the ones who came before King David. This [Jerusalem] was one of the most important Jebusite cities in the area…. Yes, it’s true. We are the descendants of Jebusites.

Similar claims by Abbas and Saeb Erekat are not new.

The Middle East Forum finds efforts of this falsification in 1978 in the Palestinian encyclopedia (Al-Mawsu'at Al-Filastinniya), 

which declared, "The Palestinians [to be] the descendants of the Jebusites, who are of Arab origin," and described Jerusalem as "an Arab city because its first builders were the Canaanite Jebusites, whose descendants are the Palestinians."The entry continued, "Ever since the destruction of the Temple, the link with Jews and Christians has been severed. Muslims alone have a right to the Temple."

No Palestinian claim is too absurd to be made -- after all, who in the West ever calls them out on such things. Here is Dr. Hayel Sanduqa on PA TV, on June 2, 2011, claiming that a famous Psalm was actually first said by a Crusader:

[The Israelis] have acted to change Jerusalem's character. Even the expression (Psalm 137:5) “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.” This statement said by the Frankish (Crusader) ruler of Acre shortly before he left – was borrowed by the Zionist movement, which falsified it in the name of Zionism.

Is the problem really that the West is unwilling to call out the Palestinian Arabs on their falsification of history, or is the problem really much bigger -- is the West actually complicit in this falsification?

UNESCO

Erasing Jewish history seems to be a UNESCO specialty.

In 2011, Elder of Ziyon pointed out how UNESCO identified the Rambam (Maimonides) as Maimouna Ibn Moussa, effectively claiming that the revered Jewish philosopher, legal scholar and leader of the Jewish community during the 12th century was a Muslim.

Other attempts by UNESCO to erase Jewish ties to their land just up to 2011 alone include:

o  November 7, 1974: voted “to withhold assistance from Israel in the fields of education, science and culture because of Israel’s persistent alteration of the historic features of Jerusalem.” 
o  November 20, 1974: voted to exclude Israel from its European regional group -- until 1978, after the US withheld $40 million in payments from the organization in protest.
o  1989: claimed “Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem” was destroying the holy city by “acts of interference, destruction and transformation”
o  1990: attacked the “irreversible” changes to Jerusalem's architectural heritage resulting from Israeli “occupation”  
o  1993: then-UNESCO director-general Frederico Mayor boycotted an international conference on science in Jerusalem
o  1995: When the UN celebrated its 50th anniversary, UNESCO refused to mention the Shoah in its World War II resolution
o  1996: organized a symposium on Jerusalem at the body’s Paris headquarters without inviting any Jewish or Israeli groups
o  1998: a delegation visiting Jerusalem refused to meet with Israeli officials. 
o  2001: UNESCO promoted the “Cairo Declaration Document for Jerusalem Antiquities Preservation,” accusing Israel of destroying Islamic antiquities on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem’s Old City
o  2002: During the Second Intifada, condemned Israel for “the destruction and damage caused to the cultural heritage in the Palestinian territories” as “a crime against the common cultural heritage of humanity.”
o  2009: designated Jerusalem as a “capital of Arab culture”
o  2010: declared Rachel’s Tomb and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs as “Muslim mosques.”
o  2011: called on Israel to stop all archaeological works in the Old City of Jerusalem

In the past, UNESCO also has also called for “financial sanctions against Israel” and passed hundreds of resolutions criticizing Israel’s activities in Judea and Samaria

According to the UN Watch Database:

Between 2009 and 2021, UNESCO adopted 82 resolutions against Israel; 9 on Crimea; 4 on Iraq; 2 on Syria; and none on Iran, Sudan, North Korea, or any other country in the world...UNESCO repeatedly denies the ancient Jewish heritage and culture of the holy cities Jerusalem and Hebron – which it has declared a World Heritage site of “Palestine.”

The Supreme Muslim Council in 1925

But when it comes to denying Israel's right to Jerusalem and its Jewish history, everyone wants to get in on the act -- which is ironic, considering how in 1925, the Supreme Muslim Council published A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which in addition to permitting non-Muslims to visit, explicitly recognizes the history of Solomon's Temple as being "beyond dispute" as the location where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand today -- and quotes from the Book of Samuel to make its point. The guide goes on to mention in passing that in 637 Caliph Omar "occupied Jerusalem."


 

The Mosque of Omar, 16 miles southwest of Jerusalem, has an inscription dating back to the 9th or 10th century CE that refers to the Dome of the Rock as “the rock of the Bayt al-Maqdis -- literally "the rock of The Holy Temple."

Things have changed.

The BBC

Things have changed in the media as well. CAMERA UK has pointed out that while at one point the BBC recognized the Jewish historical ties by referring to The Temple Mount...


...in 2014, after the PLO warned international reporters not to use the term Temple Mount, the media obliged and perpetuates the Palestinian Arab narrative, the BBC among them. Last month, when Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount, the BBC reported:

The hilltop site is the most sacred place in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, site of two Biblical temples, and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the site of Muhammad's ascent to Heaven. The entire compound is considered to be al-Aqsa Mosque by Muslims. [emphasis added]

The BBC includes a graphic that helpfully emphasizes the point:

By perpetuating this distortion, the BBC is aiding the Palestinian Arabs who undercut Jewish rights and Jewish history by increasing the number of mosques on the Temple Mount from 1 to 5 while deliberately destroying archaeological evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to the area.

Helping the Palestinian cause is the EU.

The EU

Back in December, a document came to light describing the EU's plan to help the Palestinians by undercutting the Oslo Accords and help Palestinian Arabs gain a foothold in Area C of Judea and Samaria.

The six-page document calls for mapping the territory in order to prove Palestinian rights to the land and monitoring Israeli archaeological activity, as ancient Jewish ties reinforce Israeli claims.

The document also recommends strengthening Palestinian infrastructure in Area C and supporting Palestinians with legal aid.
The article quotes Shlomo Ne’eman, head of the Gush Etzion Council and the Yesha Council who decries how "the allies of the State of Israel, the European governments, are actively working to change the borders of our country."  This is just taking the attempt to arbitrarily refer to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel and taking it to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is doing its share to falsify history.

Wikipedia

An article on Wikipedia on Iran–Jordan relations, traces those relations back for "most of Jordanian history" -- in this case back to the Persians:

The article on Jordan itself tells you that "the oldest known evidence of hominid habitation in Jordan dates back at least 200,000 years."

You have to check out the Wikipedia article on Iraq-Jordan relations to get the straightforward history starting in the 20th century:


And now the Biden Administration has decided to play along with the Palestinian Arabs. 

The Biden Administration

According to a press release from the Manhattan DA's office:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the repatriation of an ivory cosmetic spoon dating back to approximately 800-700 B.C.E to the Palestinian Authority, marking the first time a cultural object has been returned to the Palestinian people from the United States... 

“We are proud to join our law enforcement and government partners in this moment. It is impossible to put a value on the cultural and historical significance of looted antiquities and I thank our talented team of attorneys and investigators who are continuing their incredible work of returning these objects to where they rightfully belong,” said District Attorney Bragg. [emphasisd added]

Rightfully belong?

As Johanna Markind pointed out at Legal Insurrection:

American law calls for repatriation of certain artifacts to Indian tribes, if “the requesting Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization can show that the object was owned or controlled by the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization.” That is, the Smithsonian would return a qualified Cheyenne artifact to the Cheyenne tribe. It would not return a Cheyenne artifact to, say, the Pawnee.

According to the law, then, the artifact should have been returned to Israel. But that would have been a problem. After all, the spoon was originally looted from Hebron, so returning it to Israel would amount to admitting the Jewish ties to that area.

So instead, we are treated to an onslaught of government officials publically supporting the Palestinian Arabs in fabricating an imaginary history:

 Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge of US Homeland Security Investigations in New York, described the transfer of the spoon to the PA as a "historic repatriation”
o  George Noll, head of the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described the spoon as “an example of Palestinian cultural patrimony.”
o  DHS official, Jeff Brannigan, claimed that, “This repatriation is representative of HSI’s commitment to ensuring the storied heritages of peoples around the world through the preservation and protection of cultural artifacts.”
The Biden Administration is pushing a falsified history -- much as Biden himself famously falsified his own history during the 1988 presidential campaign when he claimed:
 He graduated from Syracuse University’s law school in the top half of his class.
o  He received 3 undergraduate degrees.
o  He attended law school on a full academic scholarship
But this time, the media is unlikely to call him out on this fake history.







Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 


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