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February 2018

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

U.S.’s Jerusalem Embassy to Open in May, Could Get Adelson Funds Casino magnate and GOP donor has offered to help pay for a new facility after initial personnel move By Felicia Schwartz

By on February 24th, 2018

WASHINGTON—The State Department will open its embassy in Jerusalem in May and is entertaining an unusual offer from Sheldon Adelson, Republican Party donor and casino magnate, to help pay for a new facility after an initial move from Tel Aviv, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson late Thursday signed off on security plans for converting a consular facility in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood. Officials said they are eyeing a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 14 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declaring independence.

“We are excited about taking this historic step, and look forward with anticipation to the May opening,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

At first, David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel, and a small group of aides will begin working from the facility. Next, the State Department will begin retrofitting that complex to accommodate more officials, and the department has begun efforts to plan and locate a site for a new embassy facility in Jerusalem. Mr. Adelson has offered to contribute to the effort to build a new embassy, but the discussions are informal so far.

State Department officials are examining whether the U.S. could accept such a gift. Mr. Adelson’s offer was earlier reported by the Associated Press. A representative to Mr. Adelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a speech before Israel’s legislature on Monday, Vice President Mike Pence said the U.S. embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of 2019, ahead of schedule. Photo: AP (Originally published Jan. 22, 2018)

Mr. Adelson has also engaged with President Donald Trump and his administration on acquiring land for the construction of a new embassy in Jerusalem, according to a person familiar with the matter. State Department officials said that process could take at least five to seven years.

The embassy move and Mr. Adelson’s unconventional offer come amid an effort by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mr. Trump’s chief negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, to try to restart the Middle East peace process between Israel and Palestinians. The offer of Mr. Adelson’s gift could complicate those efforts as Mr. Adelson is a staunch supporter of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and funds Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu newspaper in Israel.

At the United Nations this week, diplomats pressed Messrs. Kushner and Greenblatt on whether their plan would be biased toward Israel. They responded that they have spent months meeting with Palestinians, Israelis and others in the region to ensure evenhandedness. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of Multiple Realities: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 23 by Linda Goudsmit

By on February 24th, 2018

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The ideological strivings of our Founding Fathers were rooted in freedom, liberty, limited government, and the separation of church and state. They sought to create a more perfect union – a society of individuals cooperating by mutual consent. Psychiatrist Lyle Rossiter’s stunning book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness details America’s extraordinary achievement of ordered liberty, how its infrastructure complements the nature of man, and how the collectivist liberal narrative is pathologically antithetical to ordered liberty.

The ideological moorings of ordered liberty require consensus on what is real. This is no small thing. Language is based on consensus of what is real. Laws are based on consensus of what is real. Without agreement on what is real there is no societal order only chaos.

Senator Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” Well said. Opinions are based in the subjective reality of feelings, facts are based in the objective reality of actuality. Feelings are not facts.

This is worth repeating – objective reality is defined by facts and subjective reality is defined by feelings. The Leftist Culture War on America is attacking the ideological strivings and ideological moorings of ordered liberty by attacking its most basic requirement – consensus on what is real. The left-wing liberal attack strategy seeks to replace factual objective reality with subjective multiple realities based on feelings. This is how it works.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hard-Line Supporter of Israel Offers to Pay for U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem By Gardiner Harris and Isabel Kershner

By on February 24th, 2018

WASHINGTON — Sheldon G. Adelson, one of the most hawkish supporters of Israel among American Jews, has offered to help fund the construction of a new American Embassy in Jerusalem, according to the State Department, which on Friday said it was reviewing whether it could legally accept the donation.

The total price tag to build the new embassy to replace the current one in Tel Aviv is estimated at around $500 million, according to one former State Department official. While private donors have previously paid for renovations to American ambassadors’ overseas residences, Mr. Adelson’s contribution would be likely to far surpass those gifts — and could further strain American diplomacy in the Middle East.

Before the embassy is built, the Trump administration plans to open a temporary one in Jerusalem. On Friday, it said that it was accelerating the projected opening in time to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel on May 14.

Even some of Mr. Adelson’s allies expressed concern that if the administration accepts his offer for the permanent embassy, it could be seen as a well-heeled financial contributor effectively privatizing — and politicizing — American foreign policy.

Mr. Adelson, who has been a vocal supporter of the contentious plan to move the embassy, is not merely a philanthropist; he is one of the most prominent players in Israeli-American relations. He is a conservative force in American politics, a donor to President Trump, a longtime patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the owner of Israel’s largest-circulation daily newspaper.

“I’m concerned that people will think that this is being done because of a group of people — evangelicals and Jews — who care about it and not because it’s the U.S. government that cares about it,” said Morton A. Klein, who runs the Zionist Organization of America, a nonprofit group that is funded partly by Mr. Adelson. “It should be crystal-clear that this is the U.S. government making the decision to move it.”

Through a representative, Mr. Adelson declined to comment on Friday. His offer of a donation was first reported by The Associated Press.

Steve Goldstein, the under secretary for public diplomacy, said State Department lawyers began looking several weeks ago at whether it was legal to accept a private donation to build an embassy, a process that continues. He said the department was not currently negotiating with any private citizen for a donation, and that a new embassy building would take seven to 10 years to construct.

It was not clear whether private donors had ever helped with the financial costs to build an American embassy. Patrick Kennedy, who last year retired from the State Department, where he served as under secretary for management, said donors in the past had contributed millions of dollars to refurbish the palatial United States ambassadors’ residences in London, Paris, Rome and Tokyo.

“As long as a donor passes an ethics and background check, we’ll take their money if they’re willing to give it. There’s no problem there,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview on Friday.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yet another way Obama’s spies apparently exploited the Trump ‘dossier’ by Paul Sperry

By on February 24th, 2018

The much-hyped Obama intelligence report that determined “Vladimir Putin ordered” Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails hacked and leaked “to help Trump’s chances of victory” has been accepted as gospel among DC punditry and given the investigations besieging the Trump presidency their legs. To date, no evidence has publicly emerged to corroborate the report, and the reason may have a lot to do with that sketchy dossier bought and paid for by Clinton.

Suspiciously, Barack Obama’s Intelligence Community Assessment matches the main allegations leveled by the Clinton-paid dossier on Trump, which wormed its way into intelligence channels, in addition to the FBI, Justice Department and State Department, during the 2016 campaign.

In fact, the shady dossier makes exactly the same claim — that Putin personally “ordered” the cyberattacks on the Clinton campaign and leaked embarrassing emails to “bolster Trump,” as part of “an aggressive Trump support operation.” Like Obama’s ICA, Clinton’s dossier provides no concrete evidence to back up the claim.

After learning Obama Justice and FBI officials relied heavily on unsubstantiated rumors in the dossier to wiretap a Trump adviser during the election, congressional leaders now suspect the dossier also informed Obama intelligence officials who compiled the ICA.

The report was released Jan. 6, 2017 — the same day intelligence officials attached a written summary of the dossier to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave Obama about the dossier, and the day after Obama held a secret White House meeting to discuss the dossier with his national security adviser and FBI director.

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