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June 2018

Israel versus Iran By S. Fred Singer

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/israel_versus_iran.html
Professor Emeritus (University of Virginia) S. Fred Singer was among the first prominent scientists speaking out against global warming alarmism. An atmospheric and space physicist, he headed the U.S. Weather Satellite Service (now part of NOAA). He founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

Persian and Jewish people have had friendly relations since biblical times. Emperor Cyrus liberated Jewish exiles in Babylon and helped rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. More recently, the Shah of Iran and Israel planned a pipeline from Eilat on the Red Sea to Ashdod on the Mediterranean to supply Iranian oil to Israel and bypass the Suez Canal.

Things have changed, and in dealing with the hostile regime in Tehran, Israel’s aim has been twofold: to interdict weapons transfers to Hezb’allah and to keep Iranian ground forces away from its northern border.

Several weeks ago, DEBKA, a military intelligence website based in Jerusalem, reported on an aircraft strike on 50 Iranian military installations in Syria. All this was accomplished in less than two hours. If true, this represents an important achievement in military intelligence and in operational planning and coordination.

We do not know how many planes took part in the operation, but presume they all returned safely. Somehow, they evaded the vaunted Russian S-300 anti-aircraft (AA) system. Not many Western news services took note of this event, which occurred in the early morning hours of May 11. According to a report in Al Hayat, a London-based pan-Arab newspaper, Russia was not altogether unhappy about the operation.

On May 1, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated another intelligence coup, exposing a truckload of material, consisting of reports, pictures, etc. revealing the continued nuclear activities of Iran. We do not know how Mossad stole all this well guarded material, nor how the operatives managed to transfer it to Israel, but they did.

A few days later, on May 8, President Donald J. Trump declared that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that severe sanctions will be applied to Iran; the aim clearly was to effect regime change, removing the present theocracy.

In a recent American Thinker article, Boris Gulko expressed his belief that the Iranian rulers will not last long. He speculates that the mullahs may not be around to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their revolution next year.

Why International Farhud Day Stymies Invented Palestinian History Remembering the movement to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East. Edwin Black

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270324/why-international-farhud-day-stymies-invented-edwin-black

When International Farhud Day was proclaimed at a conference convened at the United Nations headquarters on June 1, 2015, its proponents wanted to achieve more than merely establish a commemoration of the ghastly 1941 Arab-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad that killed and injured hundreds of Iraqi Jews. Farhud means violent dispossession. The Farhud but the first bloody step along the tormented path to the ultimate expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from across the Arab world. That systematic expulsion ended centuries of Jewish existence and stature in those lands.

Jews had thrived in Iraq for 2,700 years, a thousand years before Mohammad. But all that came to end when the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the broad Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust that produced a military, economic, political, and ideological common cause with Hitler. Although Husseini spearheaded an international pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Islamic movement from India to Central Europe to the Middle East, it was in Baghdad—a 1,000-kilometer drive from Jerusalem— that he launched his robust coordination with the Third Reich.

In 1941, Iraq still hosted Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which controlled the region’s oil. Hitler wanted that oil to propel his invasion of Russia. The Arabs, led by Husseini, wanted the Jews out of Palestine and Europe’s persecuted Jews kept away from the Middle East. Indeed, Husseini persuasively argued to Hitler that Jews should not be expelled to Palestine but rather to “Poland,” where “they will be under active control.” Translation: send Jews to the concentration camps. Husseini had visited concentration camps. He had been hosted by architect of the genocide Heinrich Himmler, and the Mufti considered Shoah engineer Adolf Eichmann not only a great friend, but a “diamond” among men.

The Conflict Beyond Advocacy The Jewish community is in danger and so is the Free World as we know it. Dr. Shmuel Katz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270320/conflict-beyond-advocacy-dr-shmuel-katz

Reprinted from IsraelNationalNews.com.

Who would have believed that within certain communities, there could be more supporters of the radical Arab Palestinian agenda than supporters of the free, democratic and altruistic State of Israel. The relentless Arab Palestinian deceitful and well-organized propaganda, with the irrational support of many in the Western Media, may be a part of this transition.

The Democratic Party in the USA used to be a staunch supporter of the just cause of the State of Israel, but a recent Pew Research Center report showed a dangerous shift in this attitude. Within the more radical liberal branch of the Democratic party, about 38% will be anti-Israeli while the supporters of Israel will be only about 26%. When you look at the overall numbers as they relate to the Democratic party, you find that about 31% will be anti-Israeli and only 33% will be pro-Israel. On the other hand, within the Republican party, about 74% will be pro-Israel.

If one wants to know what the intentions of the Radical Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are, one should just listen to them. They are not bashful.

Despite an absolute bipartisan support for moving the USA Embassy to the legitimate Capital City of Israel, Jerusalem, there were no Democratic members of Congress in attendance at the opening ceremony of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Even more surprisingly, Chuck Schumer, who voted in Congress against the Iran Deal, criticized President Trump bitterly for exposing the bad intentions and the lies of the Iranians, and for withdrawing from the originally ill-conceived Iranian Deal, implemented by President Obama via an executive order, without the ratification by Congress.

Singapore or Bust Trump gets the summit he wants with Kim Jong Un.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/singapore-or-bust-1527894119

The Trump Presidency is often harrowing but never dull, so perhaps it was inevitable that a summit between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un would be back on again. The two adversaries who were publicly trading schoolyard taunts a few months ago will now meet on June 12 in Singapore after all, and the only thing we can say with any confidence is that no one has a clue what will happen.

Mr. Trump announced that the summit is back on a week after he cancelled it amid North Korean insults and unanswered phone calls. But in a sign of the surreal nature of this diplomacy, Kim then sent a top emissary who is on the U.S. sanctions list, Kim Yong Chol, to meet in New York with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On Friday Kim Yong Chol met with Mr. Trump for more than an hour in the Oval Office, and the summit was full speed ahead.

“I think we’re over that, totally over that, and now we’re going to deal and we’re going to really start a process,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “The relationships are building and that’s a very positive thing.” Asked if the North had committed to giving up its nuclear weapons, Mr. Trump said, “I think they want to do that. I know they want to do that.”

But there is the rub. If the North is committed to giving up its weapons, it hasn’t said so publicly. It has merely committed to a diplomatic process and a “phased” denuclearization in return for certain unspecified concessions from the U.S. But that is also what the North committed to do in the 1990s and again in the 2000s only to continue its nuclear work in secret and eventually toss out United Nations inspectors.

The summit will be an immediate propaganda coup for Kim, a sanctioned rogue who will appear on the world stage with a U.S. President for the first time. The question is what Mr. Trump will be able to take away beyond the photos of a presidential meet and greet. Mr. Trump is nothing if not confident in his negotiating abilities, and he clearly savors dominating world attention with this kind of made-for-global-TV drama.

But he also isn’t known for mastering policy details, and it was only days ago that the North released three American hostages after months of captivity, and only months ago that it essentially murdered American tourist Otto Warmbier after arresting him for trying to take home a wall poster.

The Catholic School Difference A new study shows the benefit of demanding student self-discipline.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-catholic-school-difference-1527894168

For the thousands of nuns who have served as principals at Catholic schools, their emphasis on self-discipline must seem like common sense. But a new academic study confirms the sisters are on to something: You can instill self-discipline in students, a virtue that will help them in their studies and later in life.

The study was conducted for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute by University of California-Santa Barbara associate professor Michael Gottfried and doctoral student Jacob Kirksey. The authors analyzed two waves of national data on elementary school students collected under the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study for the National Center for Education Statistics. They compared children in Catholic schools with those in public schools and other private schools, religious and secular.

The authors found statistically meaningful evidence that students in Catholic schools exhibited less disruptive behavior than their counterparts in other schools. “According to their teachers, Catholic school children argued, fought, got angry, acted impulsively, and disturbed ongoing activities less frequently,” the authors write. Specifically, students in Catholic schools “were more likely to control their temper, respect others’ property, accept their fellow students’ ideas, and handle peer pressure.” In other words, they exhibited more self-discipline.

The Real Reason Why the FBI Had a Spy in the Trump Campaign By D. C. McAllister

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-real-reason-why-the-fbi-had-a-spy-in-the-trump-campaign/

The FBI had a human source in the Trump campaign, and nearly everyone commenting on it is wrong. This will set the record straight.

On July 31, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Before launching the full investigation, the FBI sent a confidential human source (CHS) to spy on a Trump campaign adviser. The CHS was reportedly Stefan Halper, a slick political operative for past GOP campaigns and a foreign policy expert with extensive CIA and MI6 connections.

Halper is the latest twist in a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has been peddled past its expiration date. The question is, did the Obama administration have the authority to spy on the Trump campaign? The answer is—sort of, but not really. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

As stated by FBI Director James Comey, the investigation into Russian interference and any links with the Trump campaign was not a regular criminal investigation but a “counterintelligence” investigation. A national security operation of this sort comprises three stages: threat assessment, preliminary investigation, and full investigation. The FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidel (DIOG) has established specific requirements at each stage.