RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/the_problem_isnt_in_palestinian_numbers_.html

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted out a number this week — <200,000 -- that he says is the State Department estimate of “original” Palestinian refugees from 1948-50 still living. They are differentiated from the descendants of those people, which the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) says is 5,663,790. UNRWA’s numbers are notoriously unreliable, but go with it for a moment. That means there are 5,463,790 extras -- more or less. The incoming administration has made it clear that it hopes to restore aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), cut off by the State Department for Palestinian financial mismanagement and support for terrorism. There are also reports that the Biden team wants to reopen the PLO Washington office and to increase its contact with the PA in Ramallah. Restoration of the “peace process” is, clearly, on the agenda. But therein lies the dilemma for the U.S. and the irrelevance of the number of actual Palestinian refugees. The notion of a “peace process” presumes that “peace” is the goal. The “two-state solution,” postulates Palestinian acceptance of a split, rump state squeezed in between a hostile Israel and a more hostile Jordan. That they accept that Acre, Jaffa, and the Galilee Triangle will be sovereign territory in the Jewish homeland; Jerusalem, too. Hamas and Fatah, however, are clear about three goals. An independent state without recognizing a legitimate and permanent State of Israel in any territory. Both factions would accept a temporary agreement with Israel on the way to the fulfillment of the PLO Charter to which both are committed. (Reading the Charter will tell you what else they are committed to, and it isn’t a “two-state solution.”) Sovereign control of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. The right of entry for all remaining 1948–1950 Arab refugees from Britain’s Mandatory Palestine, as well as their descendants, to any place within pre-1967 Israel in which they or their antecedents claim to have lived. The possible outcomes of the Palestinian refugee issue are also only three: to allow them to go to Israel as they choose (the so-called "right of return"); to formulate their resettlement (and compensation) in the new State of Palestine; or formulate their resettlement (and compensation) somewhere else. The first means the dissolution of the State of Israel. Only in the other scenarios would the actual number of people be important. The problem for American diplomacy is that the Palestinians have rejected the second and third outcomes. Out loud. Often.

https://bit.ly/3bZ6j3E
Bipartisan support track record

According to the March 2020 annual Gallup poll of country favorability, Israel benefits from a 74% favorability (90% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats), compared to a 23% favorability of the Palestinian Authority (9% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats).

With the dawn of the Biden Administration, Israel enjoys bipartisan support among most US voters and, therefore, among members of the US House of Representatives and Senate.  However, one should not ignore the gradual – and recently accelerated – erosion of this support.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Israel’s national security policy – and especially its confrontational opposition to the 2015 Iran accord (JCPOA) – is responsible for the erosion of the bipartisan support.

However, US-Israel relations have experienced a number of raucous confrontations between US presidents and Israeli prime ministers – some of them harsher than the Obama-Netanyahu “Iran showdown” – but that did not fracture bipartisan support of Israel.

For example, in 1948-49, during and following Israel’s War of Independence against a military invasion by five Arab countries, Prime Minister Ben Gurion confronted a most brutal pressure by the White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA to refrain from the application of Israel’s law to “occupied” West Jerusalem and parts of the Galilee, the coastal plain and the Negev. The US Administration claimed that Israel’s “intransigence” would severely undermine US-Arab relations, threaten the supply of Arab oil, serve Soviet interests and further destabilize the Middle East (all of which were resoundingly repudiated by reality). 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/bidens-america-a-cautionary-tale-for-israel-opinion-656280

With newly instated US President Joe Biden now firmly ensconced in the White House after a contentious ballot battle, Israel must turn its attention to March 23, the date set for the fourth Knesset election in two years. And though daily polls on how each of the parties is faring may fill airtime and satisfy viewers’ curiosity, they do not constitute the kind of focus that is sorely needed at this juncture.

In light of the extraordinary rise and ultimate hard fall of Donald Trump, a couple of lessons are in order for the Jewish state that was affected so greatly by his single term in office.

Because the coronavirus crisis is the most pressing issue at the moment, there is a natural tendency to blame the head of one’s country both for the morbidity/mortality rates and for the economic disaster wrought by government-imposed lockdowns. This was a key factor in Trump’s defeat.

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the US economy was booming. Unemployment, including among minorities, was at an all-time low; the stock market reached record heights. Middle-class Americans were beginning to breathe again. Had the virus not struck, Trump still would have been Trump.

He would have enraged his enemies. He would have grated on the nerves of supporters with genteel sensibilities. And he still occasionally would have embarrassed even a few ardent fans.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/biden-changes-u-s-ambassador-to-israel-tw

The Biden administration on Wednesday reversed a change to the U.S. ambassador to Israel’s Twitter account name to read, “the official Twitter account of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza” after a Washington Free Beacon report highlighting the shift.

For a time on Wednesday, the official Twitter feed for the U.S. ambassador to Israel had its title changed to add “the West Bank and Gaza,” territories the United States has for decades avoided taking a stand on due to ongoing peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. The title change sparked an outcry online, including among Republican lawmakers, and was quietly changed back to read only, “U.S. ambassador to Israel.” The State Department would not comment on the initial change or why it was changed back to its original form.

Embassy officials have speculated that the title was inadvertently changed by Twitter due to a technical glitch when the accounts were switched from the Trump administration over to the Biden administration. The Free Beacon could not confirm the veracity of these claims.

“The U.S. doesn’t have ambassadors to any other disputed territory in the world. Singling out Israel, once again, is wrong,” said Len Khodorkovsky, former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department. “Instead of building on all the progress that’s been made toward peace in the Middle East, the Biden administration seems to be reversing course toward the failed policies of the Obama years.”

During the Obama administration, former ambassador Dan Shapiro was referred to in official communications as the “U.S. Ambassador to Israel.”

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/what-apartheid-2/

Last week, I woke up one morning in my Nazareth home and was astonished to discover I was living under a racist apartheid regime whose only purpose is “the promotion and perpetuation of the superiority of one group of people – the Jews.” I rubbed my eyes, read the story in greater depth, and calmed down as soon as I realized the reports were based on yet another report by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem.

The problem is that this report has spread like wildfire around the world, and the propaganda is working. B’Tselem, which presents itself as a human-rights organization, is in fact known as an organization with a clear political stance that is in contrast to Israel’s position. As it turns out, people have no boundaries. How dare they say that I, an Arab Israeli who served along with Jewish soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces and managed hundreds of Jewish employees, live under an apartheid regime?

How can anyone say our society is living under an apartheid regime when among us you will find doctors, judges, and even lawmakers? How can you say Samer Haj-Yehia lives in an apartheid regime when he is the head of the biggest bank in Israel? B’Tselem has already broken the record for hypocrisy, but to compare Israel to an apartheid regime for its racial laws is not only a distorted lie but an insult to all those South Africans who actually lived through apartheid. It is contempt for and cynical exploitation of the concept.