FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Rebuild What With Whom? Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/rebuild-what-whom-opinion-1594375?utm_term=Autofe

Video has emerged of Palestinians fighting on the grounds of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, also known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The AP reported that only hours after the ceasefire with Israel took effect, thousands of Hamas supporters demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the rule of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, chanting, “Dogs of the Palestinian Authority, out, out. The people want the president to leave.” Violence quickly ensued.

This is a glimpse of Palestinian politics that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should take seriously as they discuss reconstruction in Gaza. The Hamas rocket war on Israel owed much to the Hamas-Fatah civil war that began in 2007 and has simmered since then, with Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank. Each is a dictatorship. In the run-up to a planned 2021 Palestinian election, Abbas stoked violence against Israel, claiming that Al-Aqsa was under siege and Israel was committing “ethnic cleaning.” Abbas, apparently, feared he might lose the election to Hamas—so he canceled it and blamed Israel.

PA television was full of speeches and music videos promising glory for those who killed Jews. A music video was repeatedly broadcast in which Palestinians declared, “I fired my shots, I threw my bomb, I detonated, detonated, detonated my [explosive] belts. …My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.” Abbas’ religious affairs advisor told viewers, “Islam does not want you to be submissive to others,” and “if you die fighting, you go to paradise; if you kill the enemies, they go to hell.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arab states are ‘washing their hands’ of Palestinians Practical governments are seeking mutually beneficial relations with Israel. Andrew Harrod

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/analysts-arab-states-are-washing-their-hands-of-palest

In what proved to be a snapshot of professional views of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the eve of war, Georgetown University adjunct professor and Middle East Institute (MEI) senior fellow Khaled Elgindy concluded that the “Arab world is sort of washing their hands” of the Palestinian cause during a May 3 MEI webinar. He agreed with his fellow panelists addressing “Arab-Israeli Normalization: A Viable Avenue Towards Peace?” that America and Arab states are prioritizing practical self-interests over an increasingly failed, violent Palestinian state project.

The panelists examined the implications of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates establishing normal diplomatic relations with Israel during former President Donald Trump’s final months in office. These agreements initiated by Bahrain and UAE’s Abraham Accords have become only more remarkable in the days following the panel. The Iranian-supported Hamas terror group in Gaza renewed rocket attacks against Israel on May 10, firing thousands of rockets at Tel Aviv and other Israeli civilian population centers. Israel retaliated with airstrikes and artillery. UAE officials warned Hamas of sanctions if its campaign persists.

These Arab state recognitions of Israel “robbed the Palestinians of one of the very few points of leverage that they had vis-à-vis Israel,” noted Elgindy. Palestinians suffer “already pretty stark power asymmetry” with Israel. Given this “existential threat to the Palestinian national project,” he added, the “Palestinian response across the political spectrum was extremely negative.”

Richardson Center for Global Engagement vice president and executive director Mickey Bergman, Elgindy’s fellow Georgetown adjunct, argued that these Arab states had been “very opportunistic” in making deals with Israel. The panelists noted that Trump recognized Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara and delisted Sudan as a state sponsor of terror. Meanwhile, Bahrain and the UAE wanted closer ties with Israel and the United States, particularly given growing Iranian threats.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why western mobs are now sticking it to the Jews The public has yet to grasp how “psy-ops” against Israel has messed with their minds Melanie Phillips

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/why-western-mobs-are-now-sticking?token

“Palestinianism and Black Lives Matter have not been hijacked by anti-Jewish and anti-white bigots. They are intrinsically anti-Jew and anti-white movements. Until and unless this is acknowledged, the horrendous madness through which we are now living will continue to worsen.”

Anyone who imagined that with the Gaza cease-fire the antisemitism that erupted around the west would correspondingly die down has been sorely mistaken.

It has not only continued to become ever more brazen and intimidatory but, astonishing this may seem, it has now morphed into something even more chilling. The toxic core of it, the Israel libel that fuels the onslaught, has become an axiomatic lie and a supposed marker of public conscience.

What some of us warned about the Labour party’s antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has now proved all too true.  This malignity was not confined to the hard-left. It reflected a terrible development that had poisoned the entire “progressive” world and was rippling out beyond even that.

What’s been happening over the past few days has been horrifying: not just the continued and ever more brazen Jew-baiting, but the relative indifference which greets it and which ensures it continues to accelerate, even though physical attackers may be arrested and prosecuted. 

In city after city, anti-Jewish onslaughts have been occurring camouflaged as pro-Palestinian demonstrations. While some useful idiots in attendance may have thought they were signalling their virtuous support for the oppressed, the language used and the targets of physical assaults committed under cover of these placards reveal the true agenda.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Elite anti-Semitism at the Boston Globe Their cartoon is both vile and factually incorrect Charles Lipson

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/elite-anti-semitism-boston-globe/

Some people think the vicious attacks on Jews happen only in Times Square or in Los Angeles restaurants. Not so. They think the apologists for these crimes are limited to the Squad and extreme leftists, some of whom actually tweeted it is wrong even to condemn anti-Semitism. That sewer of hatred would be dreadful enough, but the problem is bigger than that.

The thugs on the street have some ideological backing from the mainstream media and, of course, universities. Take a truly noxious cartoon in the Boston Globe, one of America’s most prominent newspapers. It appeared in the May 22 print edition (page A9) and online on May 21. The drawing and text by Christopher Weyant efficiently consolidated elite hatred of Israel and Jews into a neat, toxic mix.

It is shameful that the Boston Globe printed it and tried to ensure its national distribution by posting it as an official newspaper tweet. The tweet was still live on May 25. Spewing this hatred is not a problem, for the Globe or Twitter, apparently.

The cartoon is both vile and factually incorrect. More important, it is exactly what modern, intellectual anti-Semitism looks like. The idea is to link the Jewish state to deliberate, willful killing of innocents, to inhumanity and brutal militarism.

In what ways is the cartoon wrong?

First, contrary to the drawing, Israel’s air campaign made every effort to avoid civilian casualties. Even a cursory investigation by the artist and the Boston Globe’s editorial page editors would have demonstrated that point. Either they didn’t bother to look, or they ignored the inconvenient facts because they undermined their editorial viewpoint.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A look back at the first disastrous ‘two-state solution’ Victor Sharpe

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/210512

“It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.” Rashida Tlaib, Democrat Congresswoman                                                                                                

In the 11th hour and 59th minute of his last term in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama struck his knife deep into the heart of Israel. With the appalling anti-Israel passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, engineered by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on December 23, 2016, the blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict was falsely imparted upon the easy target: Israel.

In June, 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish state survived yet another Arab war of genocide launched against it and freed the embattled nation from the existing 1947 nine – to – fifteen – mile – wide armistice lines, which Israel’s earlier minister of foreign affairs, Abba Eban, appropriately called the Auschwitz lines. Those were the lines that existed after the fledgling Israeli forces in 1948 had pushed back the invading Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese armies. Israel declared its independence in May, 1948 and immediately the Arabs launched a war of genocide.

But let us go back to 1920 when Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the defeat of the 400 year old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

The League of Nations created a number of articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to arbitrarily tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the River Jordan and give it to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan and led by the emir Abdullah.

British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”

Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili Jewish underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine from 1517 to 1917.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Sydney Williams on The Age of Acrimony by Jon Grinspan

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“There is incredible variability in how we have used our democracy, with plenty of room for ugliness without apocalypse, and for reform without utopia.”   Jon Grinspan

                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The preamble to the Constitution begins: “We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union…” The emphasis is on “more.” The Founders never claimed to have formed a “perfect” Union, but one better than those that then existed. Also, in providing a process to improve and adjust the Constitution amendments were permitted. In fact, the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratified on December 15, 1791. In the subsequent 230 years, seventeen additional amendments have been ratified. Our democracy is not static; it adjusts, not easily but judiciously, as customs and behaviors change. Jon Grinspan has given us, who now live in a new age of political strife, a well-written – albeit brief – informative look at the fifty years following the Civil War – a time of political acrimony.

The time span covered by Mr. Grinspan – 1865 to 1915 – begins with the assassination of Lincoln and a Country emerging from the Civil War; it ends with the United States having surpassed Britain as the world’s largest industrial power. He takes us through Reconstruction and how it petered out, with violence in the South against blacks and with the North having given up on the concept of equal rights. We travel through the “Gilded Age” when fortunes were made in railroads, mining, oil, steel, electricity, shipping, newspapers and finance, and when former farmhands, women and children were recruited to work in city sweat shops and factories, where they performed low-paying, mind-numbing (often dangerous) repetitive jobs. His story ends with the reforms of the “Progressive Era.” In the early post-Civil War period, the public wanted the entertainment that political campaigners provided: “They expected charisma and wit and the hottest-burning fuel of the era: political outrage.” During these fifty years, we saw eleven Presidents, high voter turnout and two Presidents assassinated, Garfield and McKinley. Voter turnout peaked in the election of 1896 at 79.5%. Twenty-eight years later it troughed at 48.8% in 1924. While Republicans dominated the White House during the fifty years covered by Mr. Grinspan, elections were always close. The only two Presidents to be elected with more than 53% of the popular vote during that period were Ulysses Grant in 1872 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Presidential election winners in 1880,1884, 1888, 1892 and 1912 won with less than 50% of the popular vote.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Even with a Deal, the Mullahs Will Pursue Nukes by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17400/iran-will-pursue-nukes

It is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

Tehran claimed that the “secret atomic warehouse,” located in a village of Turquz Abad in the suburbs of Tehran, was a place where carpets were cleaned.

The IAEA at first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.

The mullahs of Iran will not honor any deal with the international community. While the mullahs will gladly reap the profits of any nuclear deal and its lifting of the sanctions, their regime will continue pursuing its covert attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and overt attempts — with China — to take over the Middle East.

Just recently, we have seen Iran’s entrenchments in Syria and Iraq; its takeover of Lebanon by its proxy Hezbollah; its stepped-up aggression against Saudi Arabia by its proxy, the Houthis, and its 4,000-rocket war this month on the tiny country of Israel by yet another proxy, Hamas.

Whatever “deal” is struck in Vienna, Iran is not interested in “stabilizing” the Middle East. As the Biden administration has correctly pointed out, Iran’s leaders, with China, seem interested only in destabilizing, then dominating it.

The argument that negotiating and reaching a nuclear deal with the mullahs of Iran will curb their nuclear ambitions and prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons is, sadly, a dangerous fantasy.

The nuclear deal has sunset clauses that soon remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal expires. In short, the nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state after it concludes.

Even before that, however, it is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

It was not one year into the 2015 nuclear deal that two credible intelligence reports revealed that Iran had no intention of honoring the terms of the deal it had just reached with the Obama-Biden administration. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, revealed in its annual report in 2016 that the Iranian government had been pursuing a “clandestine” path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies “at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden State Dept. Urging U.S. Embassies to Fly BLM Flags to Mark 1-Year Anniversary of George Floyd’s Death By Debra Heine

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/24/biden-state-dept-urging-u-s-embassies-to-fly-blm-flags-to-mark-1-year-anniversary-of-george-floyds-death/

The Biden State Department is encouraging all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” to display Marxist Black Lives Matter flags on May 25 to mark the one year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, according to a memo obtained by Human Events reporter Jack Posobiec.

The memo, signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the United States would be among “many in the international community” honoring the career criminal.

Summary: May 25 marks one year since the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year, the horrific video of Mr. Floyd’s final 9 minutes and 29 seconds went viral and spurred Black Lives Matter protests worldwide, in response to his senseless killing and to demand an end to systemic racism and police brutality. One year later, many in the international community will honor Mr. Floyd and acknowledge the long journey nations face to advance racial justice. Leading up to May 25, the Department has issued guidance on the use of Black Lives Matter language, banners, and flags. End Summary.

The vandalism and looting that followed the death of Floyd reportedly cost the insurance industry up to $2 billion, more than any other violent demonstrations in recent history. At least 25 Americans were killed during the unrest, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED).

Additionally, the radical organization’s “Defund the Police” agitation has led to a massive surge in violent crime throughout the nation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Time to Confront the U.S. Capitol Police About Its January 6 Lies House Republicans unanimously voted against Pelosi’s $60 million payback to the USCP. GOP senators should do the same. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/24/time-to-confront-the-u-s-capitol-police-about-its-january-6-lies/

The body of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick wasn’t even cold before his employer leveraged his untimely death to stoke more outrage about the events in the nation’s capital on January 6.

“At approximately 9:30 p.m. this evening . . . United States Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty,” read a press release issued January 7. “Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots [and] was injured while physically engaging with protesters.  He returned to his division office and collapsed.  He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners.”

The agency intentionally included the word “homicide” to suggest Sicknick was killed by homicidal Trump supporters. The next day, the New York Times, citing two anonymous law enforcement officials, claimed “pro-Trump rioters . . . overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

“With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”

We now know that gruesome account was completely fabricated. Can anyone doubt, given their flagrant partisanship in the wake of the Capitol protest, the U.S. Capitol Police planted the now-retracted fire extinguisher story?

Rather than act as a politically neutral law enforcement agency tasked with protecting government grounds and public officials on behalf of the federal taxpayers they serve, the USCP has contributed to the fabulism about January 6 while covering up other aspects to help Democrats and Joe Biden’s Justice Department keep the “insurrection” narrative alive. There’s no question many Capitol Police officers acted heroically in the face of several protesters bent on violence that day, however, USCP brass have helped Democrats define the January 6 groupthink from the start.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” former USCP chief Steven Sund wrote in a statement posted January 7. “[M]ake no mistake—these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

What is more sad than the occupation? The need for it. By Lev Tsitrin

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/what_is_more_sad_than_the_occupation_the_need_for_it.html

Not unnaturally, the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, and Arab-Jewish violence inside Israel, attracted much media attention. Day after day, pages of the New York Times were filled with reports and opinions from the region — often of very questionable quality. “Guest essays” from Palestinians in Gaza painted a picture of indiscriminate, brutal Israeli attacks on the innocent civilians huddled with their wives and children in helpless dread, not knowing what next to expect from the bare-fanged Israeli monsters.

Equally gruesome was an article showing the picture of wanton Jewish cruelty, that forgot to mention that the organized Jewish self-defense arose as a response to Arab attacks on Jewish Israelis inside Israel which inadequate policing failed to prevent. A gloomy New York Times story about Israel squashing ordinary Palestinians’ simple human happiness was also devoid of background and context.

This article provides the background and context that the New York Times ignored. Let’s fill in the gap by starting with an obvious question: Why is there an “occupation” in the first place? How did it come to be? Why hasn’t it ended long ago? I would argue that, ultimately, it is rooted in willful Palestinian ignorance of Arab history.

(Note: I am speaking here about title to the land, not the right to possession. For centuries, Muslims tolerated a handful of Jews on what was once malarial, swampy land. What they cannot tolerate is Jewish ownership of the land.)

It’s inconceivable that the Palestinians do not know the story of the Arab conquest that started immediately after Mohammed’s death. Within a few centuries, Muslim Arabs spread from what is today’s western Saudi Arabia to encompass half of the then-known world, from Spain in the west to the border of India in the east. The former Roman territory of Palestine (a name the Romans bestowed on the land) came under Arab dominance in about 636 AD. The Arab’s did not begin human settlement on that strip of land, of course. It had been populated since time immemorial, including the Jews who, by 636 had already lived there for close to 2,000 years.