Jonathan Tobin: The US ambassador to Israel calls pay-for-slay 'martyr payments' - for starters
Thomas Nides may not be able to erase everything his predecessor accomplished. But he’s doing his best. That was the upshot of an astonishing webinar conducted by the U.S. ambassador to the State of Israel earlier this week with Americans for Peace Now.Another Palestinian ‘Moderate’ Is Exposed
Israelis and American friends of Israel were aware that Nides and his boss, President Joe Biden, have a different point of view about the Jewish state, as well as the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, than that of former President Donald Trump and his envoy to Israel, David Friedman. But what his conversation laid bare wasn’t just hostility to the views of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including many in the current government. Nor was it about what Trump tried to do in order to shake the Palestinian Arabs out of their intransigence and to help facilitate normal relations between the Jewish state and much of the Arab world. Like others in the administration these days, he is determined to stick with the foreign-policy establishment’s failed Middle East policies of the past to try to force Israel to do things that voters of that democratic nation have repeatedly rejected.
Nides tossed diplomatic courtesy to the winds in the webinar in which he spoke of there being people in the current government to which he is accredited with whom he would not wish to have dinner. The former Democratic Party operative, banker and U.S. State Department official also vented his spleen about Israelis building homes in Jerusalem or those parts of the 'West Bank' that he knows the Jewish state will never relinquish, even in a theoretical peace deal.
In addition to calling such construction “stupid” and “infuriating,” his devotion to restoring the pre-1967 “Green Line” extends to the point of refusing to not just Jewish communities in the territories but even to visit the tunnels under the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a stand that validates the disingenuous Arab claim that efforts to restore and reaffirm the sacred site’s Jewish history are somehow a provocation.
Instead of working to widen the circle of peace between Israel and the neighboring Arab states or promoting warmer relations with the United States, Nides indicated that his main agenda was helping the Palestinian Arabs. He seemed primarily focused on the idea that granting the brutally tyrannical and corrupt Palestinian Authority formal sovereignty was the only thing that mattered. Anything that might interfere with that, including the P.A.’s notorious “pay for slay” policies (which he tellingly referred to as “martyr payments”) in which it gives salaries and pensions to terrorists based on how much Jewish blood they spill is seen as an obstacle to his goal because it provides Israelis with an excuse not to surrender territory.
This past week, Shtayyeh threatened to upset the apple cart that the media had so carefully constructed in order to protect his image. In meetings with members of Congress who were visiting Ramallah, the PA prime minister launched into a series of venomous anti-Israel tirades.Melanie Phillips: Biden’s Unconscionable Empowerment of Both Russia and Iran
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA.) asked Shtayyeh about the 4,000-plus Hamas rocket attacks on Israel last May. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) told Jewish Insider that “Shtayyeh dismissed Hamas rocket attacks against Israel as ‘fireworks.’ ”
That’s right, “fireworks.” Which somehow managed to murder 10 Israelis and severely damage countless Israeli homes, schools and kibbutzim.
Garbarino said that Shtayyeh’s outrageous statement “really annoyed people” in the delegation and indicated that “[the Palestinian Arabs] are not ready to have an adult conversation.”
Jewish Insider reported that Shtayyeh also falsely accused Israel of “apartheid.” Remarkable! The prime minister of the PA, which forbids Jews from living in its territory and forbids Arabs from selling property to Jews under penalty of death, accuses the Jews of apartheid.
According to Jewish Insider, House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “forcefully pushed back” against Shtayyeh’s “apartheid” lie. To his credit, Jeffries recently wrote that accusations of Israeli apartheid are “demonstrably false, dangerous and designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world.”
Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) came away from the meeting with Shtayyeh convinced that the PA leaders have “such a victim mentality.” Rep. Valadao said, “I just didn’t get the impression that [Shtayyeh] is someone who is looking for long-term peace with Israelis in the region.” And Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) charged Shtayyeh with engaging in “revisionist history.”
The truth is that Shtayyeh is no different from any of the other Israel-haters, revisionist liars and terror apologists who comprise the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. The only difference was that the media had done a good job of hiding him from serious scrutiny. Still, they can’t hide his own words.
Of course, the immediate target in Iran’s sights is Israel. Bennett is in difficulties over Ukraine because Israel has Iranian militias on its border with Syria. Israel keeps them in check only because Putin, Syria’s patron, allows the Israelis to fly repeated sorties against these Iranian targets.
But Israel now finds itself not just trapped between Russia and Ukraine. It is also caught between, on the one hand, an Iranian enemy actively involved in trying to murder its citizens and annihilate it altogether, and on the other a so-called ally in Washington that is in fact hell-bent on empowering that enemy.
It’s not as if Iran isn’t actively involved in attacks upon America itself. Last Sunday, Iran fired missiles into the vicinity of the American consulate in Erbil in Iraq.
The Biden administration insisted this wasn’t an attack against the United States. But as the Jewish Institute for National Security of America observed, the strike was exactly that, marking “a massive escalation that seeks to test whether President Biden is willing to risk the collapse of nuclear negotiations by responding with deterrent force.” The administration’s denials, it said, would only embolden Iran still further.
Earlier this month, the Washington Examiner reported that at least two Iranians belonging to the IRGC’s covert-action Quds Force had been plotting to assassinate former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
According to a Justice Department official with direct knowledge of the investigation, the department possessed indictable evidence against the Iranians, but Biden administration officials were resisting publicly indicting the men for fear that this could derail the nuclear deal.
Earlier this month, Corinne Kitsell, the UK Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said: “Iran’s nuclear program has never before been this advanced, and is exposing the international community to unprecedented levels of risk.”
Its’s hard to believe, but through its double-dealing with both Russia and Iran, America is now working with a lethal enemy of the West to empower a lethal enemy of civilization.
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