Tehran, March 6 - A group that, in its efforts to persuade the public to support a treaty governing Iran's nuclear program assured the public of a religious ruling by a leading Iranian Islamic scholar against the development of atomic weapons, announced today that the same Islamic authority has issued a ruling that bars earth's atmosphere from increasing in temperature to any degree that threatens ecological stability, obviating international efforts to prevent climate change. As such, the group declared, climate change will no longer occupy a place in the group's ideology, campaigns, or rhetoric.
Leaders of the Democratic Party and former Obama administration officials told reporters at a Washington, DC press conference that the inviolate nature of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fatwas renders further efforts to forestall atmospheric and oceanic warming pointless, just as an earlier fatwa they claimed he had issued rendered unnecessary any meaningful enforcement measures to ensure Iran complies with the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry urged his Democratic colleagues to free up organizational resources and time for other important areas of concern now that Khamenei had solved the climate crisis. "Just a few short weeks ago our own Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez raised the alarm that we have only twelve years to address climate change," he noted. "But that's no longer the case. My friend Foreign Minister Javad Zarif assures me the ayatollah has now put out a fatwa forbidding the climate to change, and whatever his fatwas say, Javad tells me that's what happens. A Democratic refocus on other issues such as Israel-Palestine will bring significant benefits, in addition to shutting down right-wing criticism of our sincere efforts to avert crisis."
Obama thanked Iran's Supreme Leader for the fatwa. "I wish to express my gratitude to His Excellency Ayatollah Khamenei for yet another important step in making the world a better place," he declared in a written statement. "Just as I referred to an anti-nuclear-weapons fatwa that [former adviser] Ben Rhodes and I promised Americans definitely exists, and definitely means we can trust Iran, I am gratified that we now have another reason to say wonderful things about our partners in Tehran."
Obama and Kerry made sure to note that President Donald Trump, by contrast, had made no such pronouncement barring the climate from change, a fact that they claimed calls into question his administration's willingness to tackle the real threats facing the country and the world.
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Abbas clearly intends to adhere to this fatwa, as he made clear during a trip to Egypt in January.
"I will not end my life as a traitor," he told reporters in Cairo. "I can say 'no,' and I have a people that can say 'no' beside me. … The doors are closed to the U.S. As long as it does not retract its decisions against the Palestinian people, no Palestinian should meet with the American leadership, no matter what their role is."
More recently, on a visit to Iraq on Monday, Abbas told leaders in Baghdad that the Trump administration "is encouraging Israel to be a state above the law," as well as "biased and not suitable to be a sponsor of peace talks."
So much for the "deal of the century," whose details have yet to be revealed. So much for the fantasists in Israel and abroad who continue to harbor any hope.
It’s unequivocal that greater numbers of Palestinians than Israelis have been killed or injured during periods of intense conflict. This has repeatedly led to accusations that Israel has employed “disproportionate force” for security measures and during military operations over the years.
The term has has been abused by activists, journalists, non-governmental organizations and politicians who have employed it without bothering to research precisely what disproportionate actually means in terms of international law. One thing it does not mean an imbalance in casualty figures proves Israeli disproportionate force.
So what does it mean? Here are some explanations.
Operation Cast Lead
The UN’s Goldstone Report into the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, later recanted by its author Judge Richard Goldstone, asserted that Israel had launched a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”
Back in 2011, former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp stated in response:
no one has been able to tell me which other army in history has ever done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone.
In fact, my judgments about the steps taken in that conflict by the IDF to avoid civilian deaths are inadvertently borne out by a study published by the United Nations itself, a study which shows that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.
The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed.
That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three to one.
In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia.
Certain of our recently elected congressional representatives view U.S. support for Israel as inexplicable. They are dismissive of explanations of shared values or strategic importance. They ask what reason other than a malignant influence could possibly explain why the U.S. has supported Israel and Zionism.
They fail to appreciate the extent to which the restoration of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancient homeland has been deeply ingrained in the religious, political and social fabric of America.
Even before there was a U.S., our Founding Fathers and even their forefathers longed to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland. The Puritans saw themselves as a "New Israel." Increase Mather, the Puritan leader, taught his followers that one day the "Jews would return to their homeland and establish the most glorious nation in the world." The Yale University coat of arms is adorned with the Hebrew words meaning "light and perfection."
Benjamin Franklin recommended that the Great Seal of the United States be an illustration of the Hebrews fleeing Egypt for their homeland. John Adams wrote in 1819: "I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation." This all occurred when the Jews in America numbered only in the thousands.
Abraham Lincoln wrote of "restoring the [Jews] to their national home in Palestine" and that relieving their oppression was "a noble dream and one shared by many Americans." This support was echoed by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.
While recent congressional critics of America's support of Israel might dismiss this history, they cannot escape it.
The Democrat Party is trying to come to grips with the antisemitic agitation by Minnesota Rep. Ihlan Omar, backed by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that Americans who support Israel do so for money and have pledged allegiance to Israel.
These dual-loyalty and disloyalty accusations are echoed by left-wing and Islamist Democrat activists.
We have made the point in the past that support for Israel was at historical highs, as measured by Gallup. When Gallup released its results in March 2018, Gallup: Americans’ support for Israel increases to historical high:
These findings reinforce a point I’ve made many times. The so-called “Israel Lobby” is the American people.
Gallup just released its 2019 report, and finds that support for Israel over the Palestinians has dropped slightly, returning to the level in 2009. This drop was largely due to a drop in support among Republicans, which is hard to understand. So we’ll have to see if this is a blip, or a long-term trend. As other polling has showed, the weakest support for Israel comes from liberal Democrats.
Gallup reports, Americans, but Not Liberal Democrats, Mostly Pro-Israel: The majority of Americans remain partial toward Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with 59% saying they sympathize more with the Israelis whereas 21% sympathize more with the Palestinians. While still widespread, sympathy toward Israel is down from 64% in 2018 and marks the lowest percentage favoring Israel since 2009. Meanwhile, the 21% sympathizing more with the Palestinians, statistically unchanged from a year ago, is the highest by one point in Gallup’s trend since 2001.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey, conducted each February. The 2019 poll was conducted Feb. 1-10 prior to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent remarks questioning U.S. support for Israel and suggesting that some supporters of Israel are pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.” ….
This story is from AFP but variants of it are all over Arab media.
A Moroccan atheist of Jewish descent but who describes himself as Arab and Berber is telling the world what the Israel-haters want it to hear:
For rights activist Sion Assidon, a Moroccan of Jewish descent who also describes himself as Berber and Arab, Zionism breeds anti-Semitism in today's Arab world but aversion to Israel's policies is not a form of racism.
"Anti-Zionism is a political position and if declaring oneself to be 'anti-Zionist' is seen as a racist act, that is serious," said the 70-year-old campaigner who opposes French President Emmanuel Macron proposal to turn anti-Zionism into a crime.
A keen historian and business owner based in Mohammedia, a city on the Atlantic between Rabat and Casablanca, Assidon believes "anti-Semitism is above all a form of Judaeophobia within the European space linked to the view of the (Catholic) Church" over the centuries.
There is of course a long history of Arab and Muslim antisemitism, Not nearly as bad as in Europe but not trivial, either, with blood libels, pogroms and rampant discrimination. "Jews are descended from apes and pigs" is hardly a Catholic church doctrine.
"Coexistence between communities has worked quite well, but today there's a dangerous slide: the Jews, far fewer in number, are becoming an abstraction and their image, in the minds of the young, tends to be reduced to the one who is imposing the brutal occupation of Palestine," said Assidon.
As a result, according to Assidon, anti-Semitism in Morocco and other Arab countries is fed in part by the resurgence of conspiracy theories born in 19th century Europe and reinforced by "the total impunity granted to Israel" despite its policies of "bloody repression" censored on numerous occasions by the United Nations.
Assidon, ironically with the first name of Sion (Zion), is Jewish by an accident of birth but it is enough for him to make headlines "as a Jew" and to act as an apologist for Arab antisemitism, blaming it all on Europe - as if Arabs deciding to hate Jews is somehow less disgusting because part of it comes from the influence of Christian antisemitism.
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The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Britain republished a report from Middle East Monitor late last year complaining about Lebanese Palestinians who are leaving terrible conditions in Lebanon for Europe.
One wonders what "human rights" actually means in Arabic.
The depopulation of Lebanon’s refugee camps, which is happening at an alarming rate, should worry Palestinians more than any other current issue.
I spoke to Samaa Abu Sharar, a Palestinian activist in Lebanon and the director of the Majed Abu Sharar Media Foundation. She told me that the topic of conversation among refugees has changed in recent years. “Whereas almost everybody from young to old once spoke about their wish of returning to Palestine one day,” she explained, “at present the majority, particularly the youth, only express one wish: to leave for any other country that will accept them.”
It is common knowledge that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are marginalised and mistreated more than most when compared with other refugee populations in the Middle East. They are denied most basic human rights enjoyed by Lebanese citizens or other foreigners in Lebanon, and even rights granted to refugees under international conventions. This includes the right to work, as they are denied access to 72 different professions.
Apparently abandoned in a hopeless situation, with a life of neglect and utter misery in 12 UN-registered refugee camps and a number of unofficial “gatherings” across Lebanon, Palestinian refugees have striven to better themselves for many years, driven by the dream of going back to their homeland one day.
However, the refugees and their Right of Return are no longer a priority for the Palestinian leadership. In fact, this has been the case for nearly two decades, and now the situation has worsened. Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, tens of thousands more refugees have flooded the camps, which already lacked most basic services. Their misery was accentuated further when UNRWA, under intense US pressure and funding cuts, was forced to cancel or downgrade many of its essential services upon which refugees depend.
A suspiciously-timed census, the first of its kind, by the Lebanese Central Administration of Statistics and conducted jointly with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics last December, resolved that the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon stands at only 175,000. The timing was interesting because the survey was conducted at a time that the US Administration was keen to reduce the “official” number of Palestinian refugees in anticipation of any future agreement between the PA and Israel. According to UNRWA statistics, though, there are more than 450,000 Palestinian refugees registered with the agency in Lebanon alone.
Clearly there are those who are keen to rid Lebanon of its Palestinian population....
“There is more than one organised network facilitating the migration of Palestinians at prices that have recently gone down to make it more accessible to a larger number of people,” Abu Sharar told me. The conclusion that many of these young men and women refugees now draw is that, “There is no future for them in Lebanon.”
This is not the happy, triumphant ending that generations of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have hoped and fought for over the years.
Ignoring the miserable plight of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is now coming at a heavy price. Relegating their plight to “final status negotiations”, a pipe dream that never materialised, is now leading to a two-fold crisis: the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people is getting worse, and we are witnessing the systematic destruction of one of the main pillars of the Palestinian struggle — the refugees’ inalienable Right of Return.
While the article makes it clear that Palestinians in Lebanon have it really, really bad, to the AOHR the real problem is that when they leave they may no longer be pawns to pressure Israel for "return."
Which is an amazing stance for a supposedly human rights group to take.
Somehow, they are claiming that the exodus of Palestinians from Lebanon, which has been going on for decades, is connected with Trump's "Deal of the Century."
If the US was really behind finding new homes for oppressed Lebanese Palestinians, it should win a Nobel Peace Prize!*
A supposedly human rights group is upset that Palestinians are leaving a hellhole to find a better life elsewhere, The entire reason is because the fewer Palestinians in UNRWA camps, the less of a problem they are for Israel.
It is a breathtakingly cynical thought process that prefers that their human rights be abused daily just for the tiny extra amount of symbolism that comes from pointing to their miserable conditions and pretending that it is Israel's fault.
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Yes, these are Palestinian Arabs in an Israeli prison
Palestine Today quotes an Arab NGO as saying that Israeli actions to jam illegal cell phone use in Israeli prisons is harming the health of Palestinian prisoners.
According to the quoted report supposedly from the British-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK, electronic jamming devices recently provided to Israeli prisons from a company called Netline with jammers manufactured in China use the frequency of 2690 MHz "in closed areas in violation of international standards" set by the World Health Organization.
I couldn't find the report from the AOHR site. I found nothing at the WHO site that said that there was any evidence of health risks from RF radiation at any but the most extreme levels, although it pointed to some recommended standards.
The story goes on to say that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have appealed to the international community to dismantle these devices and prevent their use, and they are certain that the radiation issued by these devices affect their health. They claim headaches and ear pain, saying it feels like their brains are in a microwave.
If the prisoners were so concerned about their health, of course, they merely need to stop smuggling in cell phones so Israel wouldn't need jammers. Not to mention that there are equally unreliable reports that cell phone use itself is dangerous.
Somehow that solution seems too extreme to them, and their worries about their health do no extend to actually stopping using the equipment that is causing them this alleged pain.
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The general trend is not a good one. There is no other minority group in America today being systematically told that they are white and have allegiance to a foreign country, and that racism against them is not systemic. No one uses this rhetoric against Hindu Americans and no one so frequently attacks Chinese Americans with this rhetoric. And that’s how we know it’s an anti-Jewish agenda. Only Jewish candidates for office today are attacked for being “white”; not even white candidates are constantly berated for “whiteness.”
It is almost like the rhetoric is designed to turn Jews into a caricature as the highest example of “white supremacy” – as if saying “white Jews, white supremacy” enough will eventually get Americans to think “Jews are white supremacists.”
In case you were wondering if that’s exaggeration, The Boston Globe this week ran an op-ed titled “A shocking number of Jews have become willing collaborators in white supremacy.” Are Irish complicit? Catholics? Protestants? Nope. Just Jews. The narrative is: Jews and the slave trade. Jews and white supremacy. Antisemitism isn’t systemic. Jews have foreign allegiance.
The campaign is designed to attack other Jewish Americans and make them responsible for all of America’s problems.
If you don’t think this resonates across the political spectrum in the US, you need only look at the 2017 scandal in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame tweeted an article titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” She then claimed that it wasn’t an endorsement, but “Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” So she called an article “thoughtful” that was titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” That’s what they are calling “thoughtful” today in America. It’s only one step from there to “foreign allegiance.”
What’s important to point out is that no other group in America is blamed for “driving America’s wars.” Not white Protestants. Not Catholics. No one else. Only Jews. And that’s antisemitism – and it is systemic. To systematically always blame Jews and always find “the Jew” behind every problem in America, from foreign wars to white supremacy and slavery, is antisemitism. And it is systemic. And it is growing.
At first glance, the recent G-77 gathering seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody of the UN’ s largest bloc. The G-77 is a coalition of 134 developing nations, created to promote the economic interests of its members and create a significant negotiating and voting bloc within the United Nations. The new chairman, with rehearsed political correctness to smiles and applause, called on “all states” (except his) to end the “epidemic” of terrorism and “work with us to put an end to this scourge.”
The speaker was Palestinian Authority President and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas – infamous inciter and propagator of violence and terrorism against the sovereign State of Israel, and bank-roller of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than $138 million to terrorist prisoners and ex-convicts in 2018 alone. This PA program is commonly known as “pay for slay.” Through this program, Palestinians who commit acts of terrorism against Israelis and Americans are rewarded with lifetime financial benefits. Should the perpetrator die in the commission of his or her act of terror, their family then receives financial compensation.
Abbas’s chairmanship, which violates G-77 principles and the UN Charter, is the latest blight on the UN’s eroded legitimacy and credibility. Created to safeguard world peace, security, human rights, and the sovereign equality of states by peaceful dispute resolution, the UN has been hijacked by an antisemitic, terror-tainted political agenda – discrediting itself by violating its own charter. Mahmoud Abbas is himself a terrorist who openly calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States. While Abbas is serving as the chairman of the G-77, the Palestinians will be able to cosponsor proposals and amendments, make statements and raise procedural motions, and use every opportunity to punish Israel for some manufactured grievance. With Abbas at the helm there will be no peace with Israel. “Peace-building,” he says, “is treason.”
How did this sorry state of affairs develop? And what can be done by those states which are committed to the UN’s ethical, democratic founding principles?
Antisemitism at the UN did not begin randomly, but as a deliberate strategy. Some historians believe it started after Israel won the Six Day War in June 1967, damaging Russian prestige at home and abroad. The Soviets, enraged by Israel’s defeat of its proxies Egypt and Syria, retaliated, aiming its Cold War weapons of propaganda and disinformation against the Jewish state by a state-sponsored vilification campaign against Israel and Jews. It then did the same at the UN, where it forged a political alliance with Arab and Third World states. Starting in 1969, the General Assembly produced multiple resolutions affirming the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”
RUSSIA USES language for totalitarian social control, said historian Joel Fishman. Following the Six Day War, the selected vocabulary was published in the Communist Party newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in October 1967: “Zionism is dedicated to genocide, racism, treachery, aggression and annexation... attributes of fascists.” In 1975, the Soviet-Arab bloc passed GA Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism.”
People who were born and raised in Israel are not used to hearing that their upbringing is something to be envious of. The country is engaged in a bloody conflict with the Palestinians, military service is compulsory and it has one of the highest inequality rates in the West. Israelis also work some of the longest hours among states within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
These statistics do not make Israel an obvious immigration destination, particularly when coming from Germany — another OECD member that tops Israel in a number of key areas, including average wages and PISA performance. But for some German Jews, the dry figures are irrelevant. They decided to move to Israel anyway — and they have no regrets.
Read more: German politicians alarmed by rising anti-Semitism in France
"Can you really leave your house as a Jew in Germany without being treated like a museum exhibit? Not really," says Alon Kogan, a 22-year-old who was born in Offenbach and moved to Israel in 2015. "I always felt like I was a tourist attraction almost," he recalls. "Here, I no longer feel like an outsider."
Growing up near Frankfurt, Kogan was one of more than 6,500 Jews living in the area. Still, that didn't make him feel more comfortable about his religion. "People would always whisper 'look! Here are Jews! Look at what they're wearing!' if a group of Orthodox men would cross the street. It's like they were still amazed that there are Jews out there," he says.
Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....
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Mrs. Elder and I spent our first day in Israel with friends in Ashdod, and we had lots of fun - eating at two terrific places, doing an escape room, and walking on the beach.
One thing I wanted to see was the Museum of Philistine Culture.
It seemed interesting to me that Israel would host a museum for the culture of one of our most implacable enemies.
Unfortunately, the museum was underwhelming. It has two exhibit areas, but the downstairs one had nothing to do with Philistines - it was more a collection of collections of random items like keychains, lighters, matches and other stuff.
The main level had a basic history and some artifacts from real Philistines.
That was about it, not really worth the price of admission.
But it is still is interesting that Israelis, rather than try to erase the culture of their enemies, are trying to preserve it.
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Abbas’s response was again quick to come. If Israel dares to implement the law, he will refuse to accept any of the remaining taxes.
Without these funds, the PA will no longer be able to provide essential services to the innocent Palestinian population or pay the tens of thousands of its law-abiding civil servants.
As if positively choosing to deprive the law-abiding Palestinians of hundreds of millions of shekels a year while instead squandering it to pay financial rewards to terrorists was not enough, Abbas is now positively choosing to inflict financial ruin on all the Palestinians. The PA has announced that public employees and employees in the private sector will have to take pay cuts in order for the PA to continue paying terrorist murderers in full.
In the absence of any other clear legacy, Abbas will certainly be remembered as the PA chairman who paid the most in financial rewards to terrorists, at the expense of and to the detriment of the millions of law-abiding and productive Palestinians.
The writer is head of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, and a retired lieutenant-colonel who served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps, most recently as director of Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria.
Since seizing power in a 2007 violent coup, Hamas has developed a range of cynical ways to exploit civilians in the Gaza Strip to build up its military wing and promote lethal terrorist activities.
Within Gaza, around its borders, and away from it, Hamas's military wing sends out tentacles disguised in civilian camouflage.
These tactics including importing equipment for its military build-up program, embedding rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods, using human shields to protect its armed operatives, digging attack tunnels into Israel, and exploiting civilian infrastructure needs for terrorist purposes. Hamas regularly exploits humanitarian efforts, designed to save Gazan lives, in order to enable terrorist atrocities designed to kill Israelis.
Exploiting humanitarian traffic
Hamas frequently tries to exploit Israel's practice of allowing humanitarian crossings in from Gaza to send cash and explosive materials to its West Bank terror cells.
For example, when the Palestinian Authority stopped medical equipment supplies to Gaza, as part of its pressure tactics against Hamas last May, and reduced the number of medical referrals for Gazans that allow them treatment in West Bank hospitals, Israel increased the number of permits allowing Gazans to visit Israeli hospitals.
Israel did this despite having multiple intelligence warnings of Hamas intentions to take advantage of the measure.
A 65-year-old Gazan woman, received a permit last April to receive cancer treatment in an Israeli hospital. The woman was stopped at the Erez border crossing with enough explosives to blow up four buses.
On February 23rd, 2019, a 15 year-old Palestinian, Yusef al-Daya, was shot in the chest at a weekly event called the March of Return. The event is held every Friday at the Gaza border. Al-Daya was rushed to a local hospital where he was resuscitated but a short time later, succumbed to his wound.
Prominent media outlets such as Reuters stated; “Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teen.” The article makes no mention of important facts about al-Daya and what he was doing at the security fence.
This is a common framing of the “protests” at the security fence, which portray the participants as civilians and highlight people under 18 (“children”) killed. The death received considerable media attention, and came not long before the UN Human Rights Council issued a report condemning Israeli killings of “civilians” at the Gaza security fence.
Al-Daya wasn’t just a civilian protesting, he was a member of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement who have a military wing called Mujahideen Brigades.
"The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement mourns its knight: The knight of the Mujahideen / Yusuf Sayeed al-Daya, who was martyred during his participation in the March of Return and Breaking the Seige east of #Gaza." #Israel pic.twitter.com/tRGtLYnZgK
— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) February 22, 2019
While curtailing U.S. support for Pakistan, the Trump administration has been working steadily to solidify a strategic alliance with India. Most significantly, last September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis met with their Indian counterparts in New Delhi and signed an agreement that increased the interoperability of the U.S. and Indian armed forces, paving the way for Indian purchase of U.S. military technology that had been out of bounds until then.
That brings us to Afghanistan. The current U.S. policy is to leave after finalizing an agreement with the Taliban and other stakeholders through ongoing talks in Geneva. The talks are reportedly leading to an outcome that will see the Pakistan controlled-Taliban return to power in Afghanistan supported by Turkey on the one hand, and Iran on the other. This outcome, which may be inevitable in light of the balance of forces on the ground, is not one that redounds to the U.S.’s benefit.
Given that the outcome of the talks will not be a good one for America, the U.S. has no interest in being a party to such an agreement. The U.S. would be better off not signing any deal and walking away, rather than acquiescing to a settlement that isn’t in its interest. By walking away with no agreement, the U.S. would reserve its right to attack enemy targets, as it deems necessary, in the future.
Pakistan’s policy of using terrorism and nuclear brinksmanship to force India to accept its belligerence, like its policy of sponsoring the Taliban and other groups attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan even while serving as the logistical base for U.S. operations, shows that it is well nigh time for the U.S. to follow through on Trump’s campaign policy of walking away from Afghanistan.
Just as there is nothing to be gained by taking a neutral stance between India and Pakistan, so there is no point in permitting Pakistan to play the U.S. for a fool in Afghanistan.
There are downsides to walking away from Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they are far smaller than the price the U.S. pays by funding the wars Pakistan wages against it.
By Daled Amos
Richard Nixon's antisemitism did not prevent him from coming to Israel's aid in 1973 and resupplying it with the weapons that enabled it to win the war.
But beyond that, Nixon may be responsible for the enduring US foreign policy that sees
o The value of a strong Israel o Israel as solid US ally in Mideast o Israel as important for Mideast stability
Richard Nixon. Source: National Archives. Public Domain
In a recent article on The Top Four Reasons Why Rep. Ilhan Omar Is Wrong About AIPAC, Israel and the Palestinians, CAMERA notes that historically, US support for Israel was actually minimal before 1970 -- despite the combined alleged influence of the Jewish vote, Jewish political contributions, and the activities of the pro-Israel lobby. After all, just 3 years earlier, in 1967, Israel's main source of weapons was not the US; it was the British and the French. Yet after 1970, US support for Israel began to grow rapidly.
The turning point was President Richard Nixon -- and Arafat.
As Alex Safian puts it in the article:
The US president in 1970 was Richard Nixon, a Republican who knew very well that overwhelmingly Democratic and left-leaning American Jews had already voted against him in large numbers and would do so again in 1972. What happened in 1970 that convinced Nixon, the arch practitioner of realpolitik, to press for increased support for Israel?
Safian quotes the late Harvard professor, Nadav Safran, who in his book "Israel: The Embattled Ally," notes that the turning point in US/Israel relations was not any kind of Jewish influence. That influence was consistent and yet had failed to improve US-Israel relations. Instead, the turning point was the crisis of Black September, when Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, with the assistance of invading Syrian tanks, attempted to overthrow and assassinate Jordan’s King Hussein, who was an ally of the US. If successful, they would have posed a threat to western oil supplies.
According to Safran, when the Syrian army captured Irbid, a city in northern Jordan which contained a junction of roads linking Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Israel -- King Hussein appealed for American and British help. The British refused and advised the US to do the same. Other European allies also advised against helping. Nixon had Kissinger work out a plan for a joint American-Israeli intervention. Kissinger and Israeli Ambassador Rabin put together a plan for a combined Israeli air strike and armored assault on the Syrian forces in conjunction with an American airborne descent on Amman airport. If necessary, Israeli armored columns would advance in a pincer movement from the Golan and the Jordan Valley and cut off the Syrian intervention forces and destroy them.
Because of the American and Israeli support, King Hussein was able to commit all his forces to fighting Arafat's forces. The Syrians, on the other hand, wary of that support, and of a flanking attack by columns of Israeli tank columns, withdrew -- saving Jordan, and making direct Israeli intervention unnecessary.
King Hussein. Source: US Government. Public Domain
According to Safran this affair had a profound impact on U.S/Israel relations:
The Jordanian episode had a far-reaching effect on the American attitude toward Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict… [T]he President … was deeply impressed by the determination shown by the Israelis at a time when America’s formal allies had quit on him. He also appreciated the speed, efficiency, discretion and trust with which the Israelis acted through their gifted ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin…
Apart from its effect on Nixon’s personal attitude towards Israel, the Jordanian episode drove home to the President and some of his advisers a crucial point which they previously saw only in the abstract. The crisis and its denouement demonstrated to them in a concrete and dramatic fashion the value for the United States of a strong Israel. At a time when the regional balance among the Arab states, between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as between Israel and the Arabs states was seen to be imperiled and when the entire American position in the Middle East appeared, as a result, to be jeopardy, the United States was able to retrieve the situation and turn it around only through the effective cooperation of a powerful Israel….
The American action in the Jordanian crisis was therefore seen by Nixon as the first successful attempt to call a halt to the Soviet drive and begin to reverse it by forcing the Soviets to back down in view of their friends, and the key role of Israel in that action was particularly appreciated. (emphasis in the original)
It wasn't AIPAC or Jewish influence that brought about this change in support for Israel. Instead, it was the threat, brought about by Arafat's PLO that led Nixon to appreciate the strategic importance of Israel.
Safian concludes:
There is no doubt that AIPAC plays a key role in shaping the debate in Congress and in the details of legislation, military aid packages, etc., but none of these details would matter were it not for the strategic realities of the US-Israel alliance.
British documents, sealed for 30 years, now reveal that Hussein sent “a series of messages” to the British Embassy in Amman “reflecting the extreme anxiety with which he now regarded the situation.”
The report said that Hussein “not only appealed for the moral and diplomatic support of the United Kingdom and the United States, coupled with the threat of international action, but had also asked for an air strike by Israel against Syrian troops." [emphasis added]
According to the report, Prime Minister Edward Heath is quoted as doubting whether it was worth “prolonging, possibly only for a short time, [Hussein’s] increasingly precarious regime.”
Donald Neff, in an article "Nixon's Middle East Policy: From Balance to Bias," quotes from Rabin's memoirs where he tells about Kissinger's description of the president's appreciation:
The President will never forget Israel's role in preventing the deterioration in Jordan and in blocking the attempt to overturn the regime there. He said that the United States is fortunate in having an ally like Israel in the Middle East. These events will be taken into account in all future developments.
Neff goes on to describe how Israel benefited. While US aid to Israel totaled $93.6 million in 1970, by 1971 it jumped to $634.3 million and then reached $2.6 billion in 1974 after the war in 1973. He concludes: "The Nixon-Kissinger years set a dramatic new benchmark for aid to Israel. Levels continued to climb until 1985 when they settled at $3 billion, where they remain today (1990)."
None of this would have happened if Arafat had not tried to take over Jordan.
He single-handedly created a destabilizing situation that allowed Nixon to see the strategic asset Israel represented in the Middle East. Nixon was developing the Nixon Doctrine, allowing the US to rely on military and economic aid and on allies instead of committing US troops.
And Israel continues to serve as a key ally of the US to this day.
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Issa Amro describes himself as a "Palestinian activist based in Hebron, Palestine, Recognised Human Rights Defender by the UN and European Union."
He tweeted this on Monday:
The US consulate in Jerusalem was opened in 1844 to give services to the Palestinian people. after 175 years, Trump decided to emerge it to the US embassy in occupied Jerusalem. Last year he closed the Palestinian mission in the USA too, he is destroying the Palestinian cause.
So I did a fact check. And everything he wrote was wrong, although in the end, in important ways, the US diplomats in Jerusalem helped create the Palestinian cause, but not until the 20th century.
All US Consulates in the Middle East in the 18th and 19th centuries were meant primarily to help the US increase trade with the region, and secondarily to help US travelers to the area. The main US consul in the first part of the 19th century was in Beirut, and all others reported to that one.
In 1844, based on the recommendation of a Congressman, US Secretary of State John Calhoun appointed a Judeophile named Warder Cresson as the first Consul of Jerusalem, a position Cresson desired. But he was considered a strange person by others who knew him - perhaps because of his love of Jews and his determination that their ingathering would help bring the Messiah in a few years - and the appointment was rescinded before Cresson took up the post, but after he divorced his wife and departed to the Holy Land.
Cresson went anyway under the illusion he was Consul, even helping out the Jews of the area by providing what appears to be bogus papers giving them US citizenship and therefore protection. Finally the Ottomans saw that he had no credentials and he was informed that he had no title in 1848. Cresson then converted to Judaism and went back to the US to settle his affairs, where his relaives tried to get him declared insane because of his conversion. Cresson ultimately won the case in what was seen as an important early case of religious freedom in America.
The first real Consul General, John Warren Gorham, was appointed in 1856 and opened the Consulate in 1857. He hated the post, bored out of his mind and taking up alcohol, to be quickly followed by a series of equally unhappy Consuls who wanted to find ways to increase US trade with Palestine and couldn't figure out how the US could profit at all from the backwards region.
From what I am reading, the Arab residents of Palestine were of little interest to these diplomats. A number of them, notably Victor Beauboucher and Richard Beardsley, did provide protection to the Jews of Jerusalem, although Beauboucher was involved in a case where a Jewish orphan girl who was being pressured to convert to Christianity was being protected by a rabbi and the diplomat forcibly arrested the rabbi with no permission.
Frank S. DeHass (1873-1877) protected hundreds of Russian Jews who were left without protection because of a war between Russia and Turkey. He and met with Moses Montefiore.
It appears that during and after World War I, the American diplomatic role changed. Protestant missionaries and educators who went to Palestine became friendly with the local Arabs and soon became the backbone of the next generation of diplomats to Jerusalem, moving their pro-Arab ideas into the State Department, a tilt that remained for the next hundred years. On the other side of the coin, they taught their Arab friends about nationalism in the American-style schools they founded, and in that sense were a large reason for the emergence of Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism in the region in the 20th century. There is a lot about this in Michael Oren's book, Power, Faith and Fantasy.
The diplomatic history of the US in the Middle East is fascinating, but Amro shows no knowledge of the topic - only a willingness to lie about it.
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Muslim activist and faux feminist Linda Sarsour posted this on Facebook:
This is why we wanted Congresswoman Barbara Lee to be the Speaker of the House and “progressives” were like nah, Pelosi is a leader and omg you should see how she claps. What a clap!
Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men. God forbid the men are upset - no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.
For years, when members of Congress have spewed blatant anti-Muslim racism, islamophobia, propaganda against Muslims and even held racist hearings with our tax payer dollars, Democratic leadership were never swift to condemn said members or put out resolutions condemning islamophobia and/or standing in solidarity with Muslims on the record in Congress.
Democrats are playing in to the hands of the right. Dividing our base and reinforcing their narrative and giving them an easier path towards 2020.
I reject this. I will speak out. I won’t be silent. I am not following this. They don’t speak for me as a Democrat. No more double standards.
You want a resolution? Condemn all forms of bigotry. All forms of bigotry are unacceptable. We won’t let them pin us up against each other. We stand with Representative Ilhan Omar. Our top priority is the safety of our sister and her family.
Sarsour is saying that Nancy Pelosi is "upholding the patriarchy" and "doing the work of white men." Apparently, fighting antisemitism is something only racist white men do.
And doesn't Sarsour, who wears a hijab and defends Islam at every opportunity, doing the bidding of Muslim men who say that she cannot remove it without being in danger of being raped by sex-crazed men who cannot control themselves at the sight of her hair?
If Sarsour is so concerned about the patriarchy, why does she defend a misogynist religion?
Moreover, when House Resolution 569 was introduced in December 2016 "Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States," I can find no record of Sarsour speaking out against it because it didn't include other forms of bigotry besides that against Muslims. But a resolution against antisemitism is considered, and she is so upset that it is only on a single kind of hate!
According to the "woke" Sarsour, only antisemitism must be universalized (and therefore minimized.)
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Now that Ilhan Omar has made the topic of the Jewish Lobby's supposed stranglehold on US politicians kosher to speak about again, the New York Times has to write an article meant to confirm the thoughts of the worst antisemites about Jews.
I don't know, let's see: AIPAC put everything it had to stop the Iran nuclear deal - and lost. Does that sound like it is all powerful to you?
While the article mentions that as an aside, the tone of the article answers the question as a resounding "yes." It features a single AIPAC activist among many thousands, and says (without directly quoting him) that he wants to "punish" Ilhan Omar for her antisemitic statements.
Shouldn't every moral person condemn antisemitism? Why does the NYT want to make it look like the powerful Jews are working to "punish" those who are critical of the Jews for being too powerful?
Even worse, the same activist is pictured - not knocking on the doors of members of Congress, but praying with a talit and tefillin.
Because the dog-whistle of AIPAC being the Jewish lobby was apparently too subtle for the New York Times editors. They had to show him do something really, really Jewy, just to get the message across that yes, the Jews are the ones who are controlling the US government.
The Times uses another worn journalistic trope of using a question to imply something is true, but the question form gives it plausible deniability:
Has Aipac — founded more than 50 years ago to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship” — become too powerful? And with that power, has Aipac warped the policy debate over Israel so drastically that dissenting voices are not even allowed to be heard?
The question is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. No one is muzzling J-Street, or IfNotNow, or Jewish Voices for Peace, or the months of "Israel Apartheid Week" on campuses, or the BDS movement. No one.
But the Newspaper of Record is using the question format to say, yes, those tefillin-wearing Jews are indeed stopping all conversation of criticism of Israel.
By doing that, the New York Times is implicitly agreeing with Omar that there really is no antisemitism coming from the Left, only criticism of Israel that is supposedly being silenced by people saying that her statements are antisemitic. Even though they are and no one - no one at all - is trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel.
Every paragraph is dripping with implicit insinuations of AIPAC doing something underhanded, even though nothing adds up to anything beyond what any other lobby does. For example:
Aipac does not lobby on behalf of Israel; it is sensitive about being characterized as an agent of a foreign power, as Ms. Omar suggested it was during her talk in Washington last week. But it almost always sides with the Israeli government, no matter who is in charge.
Perhaps because Israel is a democracy and the choice of its voters should be respected if you want to support the Israel-American relationship? The significant Jewish lobby of J-StreetPAC specifically lobbies against virtually all Israeli government policies, which would - in a normal reading of the situation - mean that AIPAC respects democracy and J-Street does not. This paragraph implies that American should oppose Israel's government policies, democracy be damned.
The newspaper even quotes known AIPAC hater MJ Rosenberg, who says that Omar is entirely correct in how she characterizes the organization.
In short, Omar has legitimized the false charge that the Jewish lobby owns Washington, and the New York Times pretty much agrees, somehow without fear of that Jewish lobby that is supposed to shut down all dissent.
Omar has managed to mainstream antisemitism, and to use the New York Times' methods of using a question to make a statement:
Has the New York Times legitimized Omar's antisemitic claims that the Jews control Congress, that they have hypnotized the world, that they prioritize Israel over America, and that any criticism of Israel is considered antisemitic by those Jews?
Whether the newspaper meant to or not, the answer is clearly yes. This was irresponsible journalism done in an irresponsible way, without context and - with that photo- providing fuel to Jew-haters.
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On Facebook, Fatah posted the three photos above from World War II together with a story it presented as authentic. According to the version posted by Fatah, Jews willingly and eagerly agreed to bury Russian civilians alive in order to save their own lives. Seeing this, a Nazi soldier proclaimed to the Russians: "I just wanted you to know who the Jews are and why we are killing them!"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Feb. 27, 2019]
Fatah presented the story as an authentic quote from the purported memoirs of a Russian civilian: "One of the Russian prisoners in World War II wrote in his memoirs: 'In 1941 the Germans made us dig deep pits in the ground. When we finished doing what they wanted, they brought a group of Jews, threw them into the pits, and ordered us to bury them. We refused to carry out this atrocious act. So the Germans ordered to throw us in instead of the Jews, and ordered them to bury us. The Jews began to pour dirt on us without hesitation. The dirt almost covered us, but the Germans stopped them and took us out. We were surprised when the German commander shouted at us: "I just wanted you to know who the Jews are and why we are killing them!"'"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Feb. 27, 2019]
Fatah chose to post the text without comment. It did not condemn this story for portraying Jews as evil, selfish, and ungrateful. Nor did it distance itself from the Nazi commander’s justification of the murder of Jews in the Holocaust based on the antisemitic libel that Jews are defined by these character traits.
So bad that not even one of the newspaper’s contributing opinion writers appears to believe it.
For the second time this year, New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman has used the Times‘ own op-ed pages to not-so-subtly throw shade on the Times news coverage of Israel. “Contributing opinion writer” is a lofty title the Times uses for people who aren’t quite weekly columnists but are nonetheless frequent and formally affiliated op-ed writers for the paper.
The last time Friedman made this move was back in January, when he wrote a column basically endorsing a criticism I had made of a big investigative project by the Times that accused Israel of “possibly a war crime.”
Friedman made essentially the same move in Sunday’s Times, with a column criticizing the idea that the West Bank settlers are to blame for all of Israel’s problems. That theory had been advanced by New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halbfinger, whose byline was also atop the “possibly a war crime” investigation.
The recent surge of antisemitism is frightening. The World Zionist Organization [WZO] recently compiled data that reveals a sharp increase in the amount and level of hatred directed towards the Jewish people.
In the United States there was a 57% increase of antisemitic incidents in 2018. Berlin police reported that violent cases of antisemitism have tripled. In France, a 69% increase of antisemitic incidents was recorded.
Over half of the Jews in France - 58% - said they are afraid of becoming the target of abuse due to their identity. Nearly half the Jews in Germany - 47% - reported similar concerns and in Belgium the numbers - at 41% - are only a bit lower.
One cause of the increasing number of antisemitic incidents is the increasing role that social media play in our lives. The social networks have become weapons which fuel antisemitism around the world.
In the past, antisemitism was based on religious and Christian dogma, especially the influence of the Catholic Church. Modern-day studies suggest that antisemitism is motivated by other causes, foremost of which is the prominent roles that Jews enjoy throughout the world, and what is seen as their dominant influence and wealth. In the past, the Jews in Europe were viewed as inferior and were mostly restricted from prominent roles in public arenas.
Another reason for modern-day antisemitism is the festering hatred on the European continent for foreigners due to the hordes of refugees and immigrants in recent years. It’s interesting to note that these refugees and immigrants are currently the most dangerous and central threat to Jewish communities in Europe.
Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....
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Wednesday, March 06, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Tehran, March 6 - A group that, in its efforts to persuade the public to support a treaty governing Iran's nuclear program assured the public of a religious ruling by a leading Iranian Islamic scholar against the development of atomic weapons, announced today that the same Islamic authority has issued a ruling that bars earth's atmosphere from increasing in temperature to any degree that threatens ecological stability, obviating international efforts to prevent climate change. As such, the group declared, climate change will no longer occupy a place in the group's ideology, campaigns, or rhetoric.
