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O! Jerusalem

December 26, 2017

O! Jerusalem, Israel National News, Rabbi Berel Wein, December 26, 2017

The city of Jerusalem itself is thriving as perhaps never before in its long and turbulent history. The population is at an all-time high and every neighborhood in the city is experiencing new construction and refurbishment. The light rail system has proven to be a success and the good old green Egged buses are still plying their routes more or less in an orderly fashion and on a scheduled timeline. 

The city has enjoyed an economic upturn and its government has improved many of the services, quietly and without boastful fanfare. The Arab citizens of Jerusalem – they are a little more than 30% of the population here – enjoy a standard of living and opportunity unmatched anywhere else in the Middle East.

Yet, this means nothing regarding the attitude of much of the world as far as Israel and Jerusalem is concerned

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The Jewish people and the world generally were witness this past week to yet another fulfillment of a biblical prophecy. The prophet said that a day will come when all of the nations – or at least a sizable portion of them – will attack Jerusalem and attempt to dislodge the Jewish people from their capital city and its holy environs. 128 nations voted for a UN General Assembly resolution denying the right of Israel and the Jewish people to claim Jerusalem as its capital. 

Among the nations that voted for this resolution were the usual culprits – dictators, slaveholders, warmongers and many others of this ilk. And naturally the hypocritical democracies of Europe never have been able to overcome their anti-Jewish bias, developed over centuries of persecution and discrimination against Jews also supported this nefarious resolution.

There were countries, led by the United States of America, who voted against the resolution and spoke up about its bias and impracticality. In the long view of history those nations who defended Jewish rights eventually were blessed for their wisdom and kindness. The United States of America is the world’s leading democracy and with all of its warts and faults remains a shining beacon of fairness and opportunity for individuals all over the world. 

Supporting Israel’s claim to Jerusalem is just simply choosing right over wrong and realistic history over illusory plans and policies. The United States committed its error in supporting an anti-Israel resolution last year under the Obama administration. And it made good on its policy of long-standing to protect Israel from these continued efforts by the United Nations to undermine its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

There is no use arguing this matter logically or even realistically. It matters little to the world that Jerusalem, for the first time in many centuries, is free for worship to all faiths and peoples. It also matters little that Israel has all of its government offices located in Jerusalem and that Israel as a sovereign nation has long chosen Jerusalem to be its capital. None of this matters because it is not so much that the world wants Jerusalem – after all it was a wasteland and backwater location for many centuries whether under Christian or Moslem rule – it is simply that the world does not want the Jews to have Jerusalem.

There is absolutely no logical explanation for this position but there it is anyway. The terrible virus of anti-Semitism affects all attitudes and positions regarding the state of Israel and certainly regarding Jerusalem. I certainly agree that there are religious difficulties for both the Christian and Moslem worlds regarding the status of Jerusalem as being a Jewish city and the capital of the state of Israel. However just as portions of the Christian clergy and Moslem nations have learned to live with the reality of the existence of the state of Israel – itself a religious difficulty to the theology of these faiths – so too I am confident that they will be able to adjust to the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state. Reality eventually affects beliefs and previously held opinions, even those that were once represented as being sacred and immutable.

The city of Jerusalem itself is thriving as perhaps never before in its long and turbulent history. The population is at an all-time high and every neighborhood in the city is experiencing new construction and refurbishment. The light rail system has proven to be a success and the good old green Egged buses are still plying their routes more or less in an orderly fashion and on a scheduled timeline.

The city has enjoyed an economic upturn and its government has improved many of the services, quietly and without boastful fanfare. The Arab citizens of Jerusalem – they are a little more than 30% of the population here – enjoy a standard of living and opportunity unmatched anywhere else in the Middle East.

Yet, this means nothing regarding the attitude of much of the world as far as Israel and Jerusalem is concerned.

The United Nations resolution, shameful as it is, is nevertheless nonbinding and non-enforceable. It is another one of the paper propaganda victories that the Palestinian Authority revels in, which brings them no closer to a state of their own, which by now most of us suspect they really don’t want anyway.

Jerusalem was supposed to be a bargaining chip to extract greater concessions from Israel on any final agreement. Somehow that chip may now be lost and no longer in play.

Categories: Jerusalem - economy, Jerusalem - history, Jerusalem - status, Jerusalem status - European and Arab reaction, Trump and Israel, Trump and Jerusalem, UN and Israel
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Hezbollah scandal perfect timing for Trump administration 

December 26, 2017

Source: Hezbollah scandal perfect timing for Trump administration – International – Jerusalem Post

Did an investigative report give US officials the smoking gun after a year of rhetoric?

Hezbollah
 Hezbollah displays a pick-up truck mounted with a multiple rocket launcher in a parade in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh in 2014. (photo credit: MAHMOUD ZAYYAT / AFP)

An explosive and controversial report alleging the Obama administration soft-pedalled investigations into Hezbollah’s drugs and weapons trade due to the desire to get the Iran deal done is making waves in Washington. It could have major ramifications for the region as well, particularly because the Trump administration has Hezbollah in its crosshairs.

Politico published on December 18 a major investigative report by Josh Meyer titled “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.” Now US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has given the go-ahead to the Justice Department to look at the accusations. Former Obama administration members have critiqued the report.

In an interview with NPR, Meyer said he spent months interviewing dozens of people and reviewing court records, documents and emails. The probe into Hezbollah’s actions as an “international crime syndicate” was code-named Project Cassandra by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Some investigators believed Hezbollah was “collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities,” Meyer wrote.

However, Project Cassandra’s efforts, which began in 2008 and included 30 US and foreign security agencies, were hampered at the highest levels. “The Justice and Treasure departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests… and the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.” Meyer’s article asserts that there was a connection to the Iran Deal, and he says Obama administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity “said they were guided by broader policy objectives, including de-escalating the conflict with Iran, curbing nuclear weapons program and freeing at least four American prisoners held by Tehran.”

For the Trump administration, which rolled out a major policy to confront Iran in October, this report comes at an opportune time.

According to Meyer, two officials involved in Project Cassandra “have been quietly contacted by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans,” even before his December report was published. This is because of a previous April report about Obama’s “hidden Iran deal concessions.”

David Asher, who came from the Pentagon to help Cassandra, had initially been “tracking the money used to provide ragtag Iraqi Shiite militias with sophisticated weapons for use against US troops,” including IEDs. He had connected a Hezbollah envoy to Iran named Abdallah Safieddine to connections in South America and funneling money “to kill Americans soldiers” in Iraq.

The connection of Hezbollah to Iranian-supported militias in Iraq is also of interest to the current US administration because Secretary of Defense James Mattis urged action against these Iranian-supported units in 2011, but he was stymied in his efforts, according to a report in The Washington Post.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo has also been key to the Trump administration’s view of Iran. In October, he was interviewed at an event held by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and described Hezbollah as “at the center of so much turmoil in the Middle East.”

In contrast, the Politico piece points a finger at former CIA director John Brennan as urging “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.” In 2010, Brennan, then an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, had said that “certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us, what they’re doing, and what we need to do is find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and try to build up the more moderate elements.”

Trump has made Hezbollah a centerpiece of his rhetoric. In his May speech in Riyadh to 50 Muslim countries, he applauded the Gulf Cooperation Council “for blocking funders from using their countries as a financial base for terror and designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization last year.” He praised Saudi Arabia specifically. His speech gave wind to Riyadh’s decision to cut ties with Qatar the next month.

In September, Trump again mentioned Hezbollah at his UN speech, encouraging countries to “drive them out.” In September, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wrote an oped in The Jerusalem Post asserting that Hezbollah was a “proxy for the outlaw Iranian regime,” and that it would not give up its terrorist goals. She said the US and UN were “stepping up our efforts against them.”

In November, Saudi Arabia engineered Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation. On November 10, Riyadh and Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah traded accusations that each had “declared war” on the other.

The revelations accusing the Obama administration of going easy on Hezbollah will encourage a reappraisal of the efforts against the organization as the Trump administration looks at ways to pressure Iran that do not involve tearing up the Iran deal itself.

The US is still funding and equipping the Lebanese army even as it critiques the role of Hezbollah in the Lebanese government.

Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice-president at FDD says that the recent revelations will add urgency to the fight against Iran’s proxies in Syria and Iraq. “That being said this is more of a western hemisphere issue, so bureaucratically the focus will shift south of the border,” because of the connections to drug trafficking. It will also shine a greater light on the previous administration’s deficiencies in tackling the Iranian threat network he argues.

The Politico article could be just thing to get the ball rolling on the administration’s goals for 2018.

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Not-so-beautiful Dreamers: The reality behind the media airbrushing

December 26, 2017

Not-so-beautiful Dreamers: The reality behind the media airbrushing, Washington Times, Hans A. von Spakovsky, December 25, 2017

Media reports portray Dreamers as college-educated immigrants who were just a few years old when their parents brought them into the country illegally. (Associated Press/File)

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The Obama administration did not check the background of each DACA beneficiary, despite a requirement that they have no felony convictions and pose no threat to national security. Only a few randomly selected DACA applicants were ever actually vetted.

This may explain why, by August this year, more than 2,100 DACA beneficiaries had had their eligibility pulled because of criminal convictions and gang affiliation. Even if a random background investigation produced substantial evidence that an illegal alien might have committed multiple crimes, the alien would still be eligible for DACA if he wasn’t convicted.

History shows that providing amnesty will attract even more illegal immigration and won’t solve our enforcement problems. Congress shouldn’t even consider such relief unless and until we have a sustained period of concentrated enforcement that stems illegal entry and reduces the illegal alien population in the U.S.

Congress should instead concentrate on providing the resources needed to enforce our immigration laws and secure our border.

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When members of Congress battled over the budget, some threatened to block funding unless Congress provided amnesty to illegal alien Dreamers who benefited from President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which President Trump announced he is ending.

Conscientious members of Congress should not give in to this threat. Amnesty will encourage even more illegal immigration — just as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act did.

That bill provided citizenship to 2.7 million illegal aliens. Yet by 1995, another 5.7 million illegal aliens were residing in the U.S. Many of them crossed the border to join their newly legalized friends and family. Others, no doubt, believed that since the U.S. provided amnesty once, it would do so again.

However Congress decides to deal with Dreamers, it should be based on the real demographics of the DACA populace, not the glamorized image typically presented by the media.

Watching television reports concerning Dreamers, one would think that the DACA program applied only to college-educated immigrants who were just a few years old when their parents brought them into the country illegally. We are led to believe that most are so fully Americanized that they would now have trouble speaking their native language and are all but ignorant of their birth countries’ cultural norms. Thus, we are supposed to believe, returning them to their native lands would be a cruel hardship.

In fact, many DACA beneficiaries came here as teenagers. All were eligible for the program as long as they entered the U.S. before their 16th birthday. By that time, there is no doubt that they spoke the language of their native countries fluently and knew their culture intimately.

DACA had no requirement of English fluency, as evidenced by the application form that had a space to list the translator used to complete the form. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that “perhaps 24 percent of the DACA-eligible population fall into the functionally illiterate category and another 46 percent have only ‘basic’ English ability.”

Unfortunately, many Dreamers are poorly educated. Only 49 percent of DACA beneficiaries have a high school education, even though a majority are now adults. And while military service could also qualify an illegal alien for DACA, out of the current 690,000 DACA beneficiaries, only 900 are serving in the military.

The Obama administration did not check the background of each DACA beneficiary, despite a requirement that they have no felony convictions and pose no threat to national security. Only a few randomly selected DACA applicants were ever actually vetted.

This may explain why, by August this year, more than 2,100 DACA beneficiaries had had their eligibility pulled because of criminal convictions and gang affiliation. Even if a random background investigation produced substantial evidence that an illegal alien might have committed multiple crimes, the alien would still be eligible for DACA if he wasn’t convicted.

Thus, it seems that a significant percentage of DACA beneficiaries have serious limitations in their education, work experience and English fluency. What’s the likelihood that they’ll be able to function in American society without being substantial burdens to U.S. taxpayers?

Without changing the sponsorship rules, any congressional amnesty bill providing citizenship could significantly increase the number of illegal aliens who will benefit beyond the immediate DACA beneficiaries. Giving lawful status to Dreamers will allow them and their families to profit from illegal conduct.

History shows that providing amnesty will attract even more illegal immigration and won’t solve our enforcement problems. Congress shouldn’t even consider such relief unless and until we have a sustained period of concentrated enforcement that stems illegal entry and reduces the illegal alien population in the U.S.

Congress should instead concentrate on providing the resources needed to enforce our immigration laws and secure our border.

⦁ Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer. He is a co-author of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.”

Categories: "Dreamers", DACA, Illegal child immigrants, Illegal immigrant crime, Media and DACA, Obama and illegal immigration
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Japanese FM invited Netanyahu to Tokyo meet with Abbas — reports

December 26, 2017

PM said to agree to participate in meeting, which also includes US envoy Jared Kushner, if the Americans give the go-ahead

By Gavin Rabinowitz

Today, 2:31 pm

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-december-26-2017/

The Times of Israel is liveblogging Tuesday’s events as they unfold.

Japanese FM invited Netanyahu to Tokyo meet with Abbas

Visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono has invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a four-way meeting in Tokyo with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US envoy Jared Kushner, Channel 10 reports.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono (L) meets with President Reuven Rivlin at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on December 25, 2017. (AFP Photo/Pool/Heidi Levine)

Quoting a senior official, the channel’s diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid says that Netanyahu responded positively, but conditioned it on US agreement.

The Walla news site also reported the offer.

The Palestinians have refused to deal with the Americans since US President Donald Trump  recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Japan’s foreign minister reportedly invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to a four-way peace summit in Tokyo that would also include Jared Kushner, who is overseeing US President Donald Trump’s efforts to revive peace talks.

According to a report by the Walla news website, Taro Kono extended the invitation to Netanyahu and Abbas during his separate meetings on Monday with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

According to Channel 10, Netanyahu said he was open to attending, but only if the US agreed.

“If Kushner is there, I will also be there,” the report quoted Netanyahu as telling Kono.

The TV channel said the proposal was first made to Netanyahu by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when the two met in New York during the UN General Assembly in September.

It said Netanyahu told Abe he would only attend if the summit was coordinated with the US, which has traditionally been the arbitrator of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The reports did not say how Abbas responded to Kono’s proposal.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono (L) meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on December 25, 2017. (AFP Photo/Abbas Momani)

The reported Japanese proposal came as ties between the US and the Palestinian Authority have hit a nadir following Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on December 6.

In protest of the move, Abbas declared that the Palestinians no longer view the US as an honest mediator for peace talks.

An adviser to Abbas also said the PA would no longer meet with US officials regarding peace efforts, including Kushner and peace envoy Jason Greenblatt.

Despite international criticism of Trump’s declaration, the move has been widely praised by Israeli politicians.

While meeting with Kono on Monday, President Reuven Rivlin compared Israel’s capital to Japan’s Tokyo.

“For us, Tokyo is absolutely the only capital of Japan, and Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel,” the president said.

While Kono did not publicly criticize the US recognition in his meetings with Rivlin and Netanyahu, Japan last week voted in favor of a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution condemning the American move.

Although Japan has never played an influential role in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Monday’s reports said the proposal was meant to mark 10 years since the founding of the Jericho agro-industrial park, which was set up by Japan as part of the Corridor for Peace and Prosperity Initiative aimed at promoting economic cooperation between Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/japans-fm-said-to-invite-netanyahu-abbas-kushner-to-tokyo-peace-summit/

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Palestinians: Where Have They Gone?

December 26, 2017

Palestinians: Where Have They Gone? Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, December 26, 2017

(Please see also, The night the UNRWA stole Xmas. — DM)

American funding for UNRWA is problematic itself because the organization is inextricably intertwined with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This may be the right time to review the number of Palestinian “refugees” in the world and the world’s obligation to them.

Ten years ago, in a forum on Capitol Hill, then-Rep. Mark Kirk called for an international audit of UNRWA. Kirk admitted he was unsuccessful, despite such accounting anomalies as a $13 million entry for “un-earmarked expenses” in an audit conducted by UNRWA’s own board.

Palestinians are the only “refugee” group that hands the status down through generations, which is why they are governed by UNRWA; all other refugees are under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has a mandate to settle refugees so they can become citizens of new countries.

Palestinian refugees are a slippery population — but when 285,535 of them go missing from a small country such as Lebanon, it should raise eyebrows.

UNRWA in Lebanon reports on its website that 449,957 refugees live under its protection in 12 camps, but a survey by Lebanon’s Central Administration of Statistics, together with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, could only find 174,535. The Lebanese government said the others “left.” Okay, maybe they did — Lebanon constrained them viciously, so it would make some sense. What does NOT make sense, then, is the UN giving UNRWA a budget based on nearly half a million people when, in fact, there are far fewer than a quarter of a million. Who is paying and who is getting the money?

We are and they are.

The UNRWA website shows a budget of $2.41 billion combined for FY 2016 and 2017. The U.S. provides more than $300 million to UNRWA annually, about one-quarter of the total. In August 2017, UNRWA claimed a deficit of $126 million. A former State Department official said the budget shortfalls are chronic but that “the funds seemed eventually arrive” after pressing others for more money — some of that additional money is from the U.S.

American funding for UNRWA is problematic itself because the organization is inextricably intertwined with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon; see here, here and here. And specifically for Lebanon, the connection goes as far back as 2007. But stay with the “floating” population problem for a moment.

A July 2015 street celebration in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp, which is administered by UNRWA. (Image source: Geneva Call/Flickr)

The huge discrepancy in Lebanon suggests that UNRWA may have trouble counting refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Gaza, and Syria as well. (We’ll give them a pass on Syria for now.) The problem is not new, but that Palestinian agencies were running the census may help the United States overcome its own long-term obstinacy when it comes to counting and paying.

Ten years ago, a forum on Capitol Hill, then-Rep. Mark Kirk called for an international audit of UNRWA. Kirk admitted he was unsuccessful in generating demand among his colleagues despite such accounting anomalies as a $13 million entry for “un-earmarked expenses” in an audit conducted by UNRWA’s own board. An amendment to the 2006 Foreign Assistance Act had called for $2 million in additional funds for UNRWA, specifically for an investigation of finances, but the amendment was withdrawn at the request of the State Department.

As a Senator, Kirk offered an amendment calling for the State Department to provide two numbers to Congress: the number of Palestinians physically displaced from their homes in what became Israel in 1948, and the number of their descendants administered by the UNRWA. The State Department denounced the amendment, saying:

“This proposed amendment would be viewed around the world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the outcome of this sensitive issue.”

Far from prejudging the outcome, a review of the number of Palestinian “refugees” in the world and the world’s obligation to them would provide an honest basis from which to make policy.

In 1950, the UN defined Palestinian “refugees” as people displaced from territory that had become Israel after having lived there for two years or more — this is distinct from every other population of refugees that must be displaced from their long-term homes. Furthermore, Palestinians are the only “refugee” group that hands the status down through generations, until there is a resolution of the status of the original group — which is why they are governed by UNRWA; all other refugees are under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has a mandate to settle refugees so they can become citizens of new countries. UNRWA, naturally, produces the only population of refugees that grows geometrically over time rather than declining as the original refugees die and their children are no longer stateless. (See Vietnamese refugee resettlement for an example of how this works for others.)

The original population of refugees was estimated at 711,000 in 1950. Today, there appear to be 30-50,000 original refugees remaining, and UNRWA claims to care for 4,950,000 of their descendants. But 285,000 of them appear to have disappeared from Lebanon.

It has long been understood that there is an undercount of deaths in UNRWA refugee camps — to admit a death means UNRWA loses that member in the accounting for the international community. It also wreaks havoc with Palestinian insistence that there are 6 million refugees (not UNRWA’s 5 million) and that a million people are not registered, but should still have a “right of return” to homes their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents claim to have had inside the borders of Israel.

The numbers game also exists with people who do not live in refugee camps. The Palestinian Authority counts as residents 400,000 Palestinians who have lived abroad for over a year, and according to Deputy Palestinian Interior Minister Hassan Illwi, more than 100,000 babies born abroad are registered as West Bank residents — both in contravention of population-counting norms. Jerusalem Palestinians are double-counted – once as Palestinian Authority residents and once as Israeli Palestinians. The PA, furthermore, claims zero net out-migration; Israeli government statistics differ.

How many Palestinians would there be in these territories if a proper census was taken? How many “refugees” would disappear from UNRWA rolls as they did in Lebanon? How might that affect the budget?

Can we please find out?

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

Categories: "Refugees", Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Palestinians, UNRWA, UNRWA funding
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Panic at the Washington Post

December 26, 2017

Panic at the Washington Post, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, December 25, 2017

The Washington Post is worried. The lead headline in today’s paper edition reads: “Mueller criticism grows to a clamor — FBI Conspiracy Claim Takes Hold — Driven by activists, GOP lawmakers, Trump tweets.”

Turnabout is fair play. Last year around this time, an honest newspaper could easily have written: “Trump criticism grows to a clamor — Russia Collusion Takes Hold — Driven by activists, Democratic lawmakers, leaks.”

A year ago, an honest newspaper could not have written that the Trump collusion criticism was driven by the FBI. The facts supporting such a headline were not known. Now we have good reason to suspect that the FBI was, in fact, advancing the collusion claim.

The FBI reportedly offered money to Christoper Steele to continue his work on the anti-Trump dossier (in testimony before Congress Rod Rosenstein refused to say whether the FBI paid or offered to pay for the dossier). The FBI may well have used information in the dossier to secure approval of surveillance efforts from the FISA court.

The FBI also helped push the dossier into the public’s consciousness. Its general counsel, James Baker, reportedly told reporter David Corn about the dossier, thus enabling Corn to write about it just before the election. And FBI director Comey briefed president-elect Trump on the dossier, which led to publication of its contents by BuzzFeed.

We also know about the quest of Peter Strzok, a high-level FBI man, for an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency.

But let’s return to the Washington Post’s story about growing criticism of Mueller. The three distressed Post writers are less than fully open when it comes to informing readers what — other than activists, GOP lawmakers, and Trump tweets — is causing criticism of Mueller to grow to a clamor.

They acknowledge that it has something to do with Strzok’s role as Mueller’s former top investigator. However, they do their best to make Strzok seem innocuous.

The story introduces him by noting that he called Trump an “idiot” and predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the election in a landslide — statements that don’t distinguish him from tens of thousands of government employees and millions of other Americans. They also quote a former colleague of Strzok who says:

To think Pete could not do his job objectively shows no understanding of the organization. We have Democrats, we have Republicans, we have conservatives and liberals. . . . Having personal views doesn’t prevent us from independently following the facts.

The problem with peddling this happy narrative is that it ignores Strzok’s anti-Trump zeal, his obvious desire to impress his mistress, and his damning statement about the need for an “insurance policy” against Trump becoming president. The Post, in fact, never mentions that statement.

The Post also manages to ignore the hyper-partisan nature of Mueller’s staff, even excluding Strzok, whom he reassigned. There is a passing reference to Andrew Weissmann’s gushing note to Sally Yates praising her for her resistance to Trump, but no discussion of the ideologically one-sided composition of Team Mueller — a marked contrast to Ken Starr’s balanced staff.

Even with that diverse staff, Starr was successfully portrayed as spearheading a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” It’s not surprising that as more and more evidence emerges of bias within Mueller’s team, criticism mounts and takes hold.

Mueller himself is a Republican. But he is also a friend of James Comey, another fact the Post ignores. The steady stream of evidence of Comey’s anti-Trump animus and manipulative conduct has contributed to declining faith in Mueller.

And then, there’s the fact that Mueller appears to have come up empty so far on “collusion” by Trump. A prosecutor investigating a president is bound to lose credibility if, after an extended period of time, he neither produces evidence against the president nor exonerates him of the set of crimes that supposedly underlie the investigation.

A prosecutor who cannot credibly be accused of bias — either personal or within his team — buys himself time and patience from the public. Mueller is not that prosecutor.

In sum, the Post’s account of how Mueller lost the “near-universal support” he enjoyed earlier is shallow.

The Post’s story is significant, nonetheless. Clearly, the Post is concerned that, as it states, the growing criticism of Mueller “threatens to shadow his investigation’s eventual findings.”

It does, indeed. A recent Harvard poll found that 54 percent of voters believe that “as the former head of the FBI and a friend of James Comey,” Mueller has a conflict of interest in the proceedings. Meanwhile, only 35 percent believe that evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia has been found.

I’m sure Mueller believes his own press-clippings, but the public no longer does. The press, it seems, is beginning to realize this.

Categories: "Trump dossier", FBI, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Media and Trump, Robert Mueller, Washington Post
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Germany Needs An Extra 2,000 Judges and Prosecutors to Process Fivefold Increase in Terror Cases

December 25, 2017

Germany Needs An Extra 2,000 Judges and Prosecutors to Process Fivefold Increase in Terror Cases, Breitbart, Jack Montromery, December 24, 2017

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Germany also faces more longstanding issues with immigration: between 43 and 48 per cent of the country’s substantial ethnic Turkish population — which has been growing steadily since the introduction of a special ‘guest worker’ programme in the 1960s and now numbers in the millions — is ‘economically inactive’, with German media reporting the “vast majority … declare that — at least for the moment — they are not interested in a job.”

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Germany’s judicial system is groaning under the strain of an explosion in terror cases since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the door to unlimited numbers of migrants in 2015.

The German Attorney-General opened a shocking 1,200 terror cases in 2017, of which around 1,000 were related to radical Islamic terrorism, Tagesschau reports.

This represents a fivefold increase on 2016, when the figure stood at around 250 — with roughly 200 cases being related to radical Islam.

Sven Rebehn, the head of the German association of judges, has warned that the system is struggling to cope with the sheer volume of its expanded caseload, with burden particularly heavy in the migrant hotspots of Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, and Hamburg

The judicial federation has calculated that around 2,000 additional judges and prosecutors are needed if the country hopes to tackle the growing terror threat and clear the backlog, or else face real difficulty in the near future.

Migrants have not only increased the workload of the courts in the field of terrorism — for example, 91 per cent of a 48 per cent surge in Bavarian rape cases was attributed to migrants in September 2017.

But the costs of expanding the judicial system’s capacity to absorb the surge in terror cases is not the only expense to fall on Germany as a consequence of mass migration.

The cost of the country’s more recent arrivals was predicted to reach close to 100 billion euros by 2020 last year — with the figure likely to have increased since then.

Germany also faces more longstanding issues with immigration: between 43 and 48 per cent of the country’s substantial ethnic Turkish population — which has been growing steadily since the introduction of a special ‘guest worker’ programme in the 1960s and now numbers in the millions — is ‘economically inactive’, with German media reporting the “vast majority … declare that — at least for the moment — they are not interested in a job.”

Categories: German courts, Germany open borders, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic terrorism, Multiculturalism, Turks in Germany, Welfare
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Trump’s Christmas Present For Iraqi Christians

December 25, 2017

Trump’s Christmas Present For Iraqi Christians, FrontPage Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, December 25, 2017

 

Even if Iraq’s Christians never feel secure enough to return to Mosul in their previous numbers, they know that they can find sanctuary in the United States. Under Obama, Muslim migrants outnumbered Christian refugees for the first time. While Christians remained trapped in the Middle East, the terrorists of tomorrow swarmed through our airports to be resettled next door to their victims.

While American firepower smashed their Islamic persecutors, the gates of our nation opened once again to the tormented Christians of the Middle East instead of to their Islamic tormenters. Once again a great nation came into its own by sheltering the weak and destroying evil.

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Since Obama’s Arab Spring, over a million Christians have fled Iraq and Syria. The number of Iraqi Christians fell by two thirds. Obama wouldn’t call it genocide. He wouldn’t hammer ISIS.

And so the people of this country elected a president who would do the job that Obama wouldn’t do.

After ISIS took Fallujah, Obama infamously dismissed the Islamic State as a “jayvee” team that wasn’t worth paying attention to. A few months later, the ISIS jayvee team took Mosul and made it a key stronghold. Beyond being the third largest city in Iraq, Mosul and the Nineveh plains were an ancient center of Christian life. But the Islamic State had a simple message for Mosul’s Christians.

“After this date, there is nothing between us and them but the sword.”

When President Trump came into office, he made it clear that there would be nothing between America and ISIS except the bomb. He vowed to “demolish and destroy ISIS”. And he kept his word. He unleashed the full firepower of our military and

Now that the American bomb has broken the sword of Islam, Iraqi Christians are celebrating their first Christmas since the ISIS capture of Mosul.

“We offer them three choices,” ISIS had declared. The Christians could become ‘dhimmis’. That would mean accepting an inferior status in the Islamic State and paying jizya protection money to Muslims. And if they didn’t want to pay, the Christians could always convert to Islam. But, the Islamic group warned, “If they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword.”

ISIS was bringing back all the old and ugly traditions of Islam: Jizya and the dhimmi codes, sex slavery and child rape. And the Christians of Iraq were among the first to experience the consequences of Islam. Their houses were branded with the Arabic “N” for Nassarah and they fled for their lives.

“For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,” Patriarch Louis Sako announced.

On another hot summer, three months later, ISIS was driven out of Mosul in a battle that could never have been fought and won under the last occupant of the White House. The furious airstrikes that smashed the Islamic State’s hold on the city, neighborhood by neighborhood, driving ISIS fighters from their temporary bases in buildings every time the forces on the ground needed help, made victory possible in some of the toughest urban battles since Stalingrad. The unleashed United States Air Force battered the beheaders and child rapists of ISIS in a way that Obama would never have allowed.

Over a year after the fall of Mosul, our forces still had their hands tied tightly behind their backs. Even when it came to taking out the tanker trucks that carried the financial lifeblood of the Islamic State, our pilots were not allowed to just bomb them. Instead they had to make low passes while dropping leaflets that warned the drivers of the ISIS trucks in Arabic and English that airstrikes would happen 45 minutes later.

The goal was to “to kind of shoo people away without harming them.” But trying to “shoo” away the jayvee team without harming them didn’t bring down ISIS or free the oppressed Christians of Iraq.

75% of bombing runs against ISIS didn’t even drop leaflets, let alone bombs.

All of that changed when President Trump unleashed the full firepower and might of our military. The media and its leftist allies moaned that Mosul had been devastated by the punishing raids. But buildings can be rebuilt. Those who were murdered by ISIS, which had escalated its torture and butchery as it sensed its inevitable defeat, could not be put back together again. If it had been up to Obama, Mosul would still belong to ISIS. Drone strikes would not have been reclaimed the city. It took real airstrikes.

After Mosul fell, the Iraqi government asked Obama to carry out airstrikes against ISIS. And he refused. Before the fall of Mosul, “Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps.” And they got nothing. ISIS was able to overrun Iraq because it took years to get Obama to agree to do anything. Including dropping leaflets.

During that time, the Christian population of Iraq fled or huddled in beleaguered territories, fearing that if the Kurdish firewall fell, there might be nowhere for them to run. President Trump was not afraid to bomb ISIS. He was not afraid to let our military do everything they needed to do to win. Instead of lawyers in suits deciding whether we could bomb ISIS, men in military uniforms began making those decisions. And that is why ISIS is on the run.

The Islamic State was not afraid of Obama’s lawyers. It’s running from Trump’s bombs. And as the Islamic terrorists who once swore to rule the world try to sneak back into Europe and Russia, Christian families who fled their reign of supremacist terror are slowly returning to Mosul. And these returning Christians are able to celebrate their first Christmas since the horrifying years of the Arab Spring.

The number of Christians in Mosul remains small. And ISIS has destroyed many of the old churches where the Christians of the city once worshiped. But the presence of Christians in Mosul is a Christmas gift from President Donald J. Trump to a persecuted population written off by his predecessor.

Even if Iraq’s Christians never feel secure enough to return to Mosul in their previous numbers, they know that they can find sanctuary in the United States. Under Obama, Muslim migrants outnumbered Christian refugees for the first time. While Christians remained trapped in the Middle East, the terrorists of tomorrow swarmed through our airports to be resettled next door to their victims.

While American firepower smashed their Islamic persecutors, the gates of our nation opened once again to the tormented Christians of the Middle East instead of to their Islamic tormenters. Once again a great nation came into its own by sheltering the weak and destroying evil.

After the liberation of Mosul, President Trump declared that, “The victory in Mosul, a city where ISIS once proclaimed its so-called “caliphate,” signals that its days in Iraq and Syria are numbered. “ And since then the Islamic rulers who once threatened to put Trump and the Christians of Iraq to the sword have instead become refugees. And in Mosul and across Iraq, the Christian refugees are coming home.

Categories: Obama and Christians, Obama and Iraq war, Trump and Christians, Trump and Iraq war
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Netanyahu: ‘God bless’ Guatemala for Jerusalem move

December 25, 2017

As Central American nation pledges to relocate embassy, Netanyahu says it’s ‘just the beginning,’ other countries will follow

By Marissa Newman

Today, 4:18 pm

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-god-bless-guatemala-over-jerusalem-move/

This file picture taken on November 28, 2016, shows Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales (L) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) shaking hands during a joint press conference after signing bilateral agreements at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. (AFP Photo/Pool/Abir Sultan)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday hailed Guatemala’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, saying other countries will soon follow suit.

“God bless you, my friend, President Jimmy Morales. God bless both our countries, Israel and Guatemala,” said Netanyahu at the weekly Likud faction meeting in the Knesset.

Guatemala became the first nation to pledge to move its mission to Jerusalem since US President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of the city as Israel’s capital and instructions to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv.

The Czech Republic has also since recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

An aerial view of the Dome of the Rock, left, in the compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s old city, and the Western Wall, center, the holiest site for Jews, October 02, 2007. (AFP/JACK GUEZ)

“I told you recently there would be other countries that will recognize Jerusalem and move their embassies,” Netanyahu said, after reading out Morales’s official announcement to Likud MKs and reporters. “I repeat: There will be more, this is just the beginning.”

Guatemalan President Morales said on his official Facebook account on Sunday that after talks with Netanyahu, he had decided to instruct his foreign ministry to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“We spoke about the excellent relations that we have had as nations since Guatemala supported the creation of the state of Israel,” he wrote. “One of the most important topics [of the conversation] was the return of the embassy of Guatemala to Jerusalem. So I inform you that I have instructed the chancellor to initiate the respective coordination so that it may happen.”

Earlier on Monday, President Reuven Rivlin, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, and Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren applauded Guatemala’s announcement.

“Viva Guatemala! It takes courage for a superpower to stand up for justice and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital. But it takes even more — immense guts — for a small nation to do that,” Oren wrote on Twitter. “People of Guatemala, the people of Israel will never forget your support and bravery.”

“Guatemala have shown they know very well that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel! I welcome their decision to bring their embassy to Jerusalem and thank them for their deep friendship,” said Rivlin. “We look forward to welcoming you to Jerusalem!”

Edelstein, who met with Morales during his visit to Israel in November 2016, also praised his “brave” move.

“I want to congratulate my friend, the President of Guatemala Jimmy Morales, on his brave decision to move his country’s embassy to the capital city Jerusalem,” said Edelstein. “In your decision, you proved that you and your country are true friends of Israel and that the ties that exists between us will become stronger and increase for the benefit of both sides.”

During the 2016 visit to Israel, Morales also met with Netanyahu and Rivlin.

“Latin America has always been friendly to Israel, but I think we’re at a position where these relationships can be far, far, far advanced,” Netanyahu told Morales during a public meeting at the Prime Minsiter’s Office in Jerusalem.

In July, Morales decorated the outgoing Israeli ambassador, Moshe Bachar, with the Order of Quetzal on the Grand Cross degree, the country’s highest honor, in recognition of his cooperation in strengthening the political dialogue between the Central American nation and the Jewish state.

Guatemala is home to about 1,000 Jews among a population of 15 million.

Guatemala was one of nine nations that voted last week with the United States when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The resolution passed at the UN declared the US action on Jerusalem “null and void.” The 128-9 vote was a victory for Palestinians, but fell short of the total they had predicted. Thirty-five nations abstained and 21 stayed away from the vote.

Guatemala and Israel were joined by Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo in voting with the United States and opposing the measure. There were also 35 abstentions and 21 countries were absent or did not vote at all.

In a December 6 address from the White House, Trump defied worldwide warnings and insisted that after repeated failures to achieve peace, a new approach was long overdue. He described his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the seat of Israel’s government as merely based on reality.

The move was hailed by Netanyahu and by leaders across much of the Israeli political spectrum, and condemned by much of the rest of the world. Trump stressed that he was not specifying the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the city, and called for no change in the status quo at the city’s holy sites.

AP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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France’s Macron Submits to the Arab World

December 25, 2017

France’s Macron Submits to the Arab World, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, December 25, 2017

The tragic dead end of French fake “secularism” is that it allows public expressions of the Islamic religion in France, but prohibits the Christian ones.

Far from defending the Judeo-Christian values on which France, the West and Europe itself was founded — such as individual liberties, freedom of expression, separation of the church from the state and the judiciary, and equal justice under the law — President Macron recently launched an apology for Islam before Arab-Muslim dignitaries.

The balance of Macron’s recent frenetic trips to the Arab world: lavish contracts, apologetic words to Islamists, repentance of the French colonial past and silence on anti-Semitism and radical Islam. Meanwhile, in France, authorities were busy dismantling its Judeo-Christian heritage.

Macron’s special envoy for heritage, Stéphane Bern, proposed charging a fee to enter French cathedrals and churches — as if they were museums.

In Abu Dhabi, members of the victorious Israeli judo team were recently made to mount the winners’ podium without their own anthem and flag. A few days later, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Abu Dhabi, where he denounced as liars those who say that “that Islam is built by destroying the other monotheisms”.Macron did not raise an eyebrow about the anti-Semitism and racism displayed by the Emirati authorities. Macron merely praised Islam in a country that punishes with death those Muslims who convert to Christianity or profess atheism.

At the French naval base in Abu Dhabi on November 8-9, addressing some businessmen, Macron insisted on the importance of the alliance with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as an “essential partner with whom we share the same vision of the region and obvious common interests”. Such effusion seems more than the usual language of diplomacy. Macron is now showing a strategic empathy and commitment to the Arab-Islamic world. Is this statement a prelude to submission?

Far from defending the Judeo-Christian values on which France, the West and Europe itself was founded — such as individual liberties, freedom of expression, separation of the church from the state and the judiciary, and equal justice under the law — Macron in the last few weeks launched an apology for Islam before Arab-Muslim dignitaries.

On December 7, Macron went to Qatar; next year, he will visit Iran on a trip that will make him the first French president to visit the Islamic Republic since 1971. In Doha, Macron and Qatar signed contracts worth about 12 billion euros ($14 billion). And there, in a country which openly promoted anti-Semitism in its book fair, Macron repeated that he disapproved of US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

A few days later, at the United Nations, Macron’s ambassador voted with the Arab and Islamic regimes; it was a crude betrayal of Europe’s only democratic ally in the Middle East: Israel. In a single week, France voted twice to support Arab-sponsored resolutions against the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, first at the UN Security Council then at its General Assembly. As Israel’s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren said: “The UN denies Israel’s bonds with Jerusalem”. Macron’s bonds with the Arab Islamic world, however, seem extremely strong.

This month alone, France voted twice in the United Nations to support Arab-sponsored resolutions against the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Pictured: French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the UN General Assembly in New York, on September 19, 2017. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Back in Paris, Macron welcomed Jordan’s King Abdullah II to the presidential palace and praised Amman’s role as the “guardian” of the holy sites in Jerusalem. Abdullah’s goal, however, is something else. As he openly says, he wants to prevent the “Judaization of Jerusalem” — which means fighting Israeli sovereignty over the holy city.

During his recent trip to Algeria, Macron, France’s first head of state born after the Algerian War, called France’s 132-year rule of Algeria “a crime against humanity”. The French president had no words of pride for anything the French had done or left behind in Algeria. In an apparent gesture of reconciliation, Macron said that he was “ready” to return to Algeria the skulls of Algerian fighters killed in the 1850s by the French army, which are currently displayed at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.

This, then, was the balance of Macron’s recent frenetic trips to the Arab world: lavish contracts, apologetic words to Islamists, repentance of the French colonial past and silence on anti-Semitism and radical Islam.

Meanwhile, in France, authorities were busy dismantling its Judeo-Christian heritage. A superior court recently ordered the removal of a cross from a statue of the Pope John Paul II in a town in Brittany, because the cross supposedly breached rules on secularism. The Conseil d’État, France’s top administrative court, evidently decided that the cross violated a 1905 law imposing the separation of church and state. After that, the same Conseil d’État ordered a Nativity scene in the municipal hall of the town of Béziers to be torn down. Then, Macron’s special envoy for heritage, Stéphane Bern, proposed charging a fee to enter French cathedrals and churches — as if they were museums.

A few days later, however, France’s Macron displayed all the double-standards and empty rhetoric of this “secularism”. The French authorities allowed Muslims in the Paris suburb of Clichy La Garenne to a hold a mass prayer on the street. That is why 100 French politicians and administrators took to the streets of Paris to protest against these prayers. “Public space cannot be taken over in this way”, said Valérie Pécresse, president of the Paris regional council.

That is exactly the tragic dead end of French fake “secularism”: it allows public expressions of the Islamic religion in France, but prohibits the Christian ones.

In Paris, Saudi Arabia, a major focus of Macron’s foreign policy, is busy these days sponsoring “cultural initiatives”. Saudi Arabia has been involved in the renovation of the Institute of the Arab World, located in Paris. Jack Lang, the institute’s director, unveiled a plaque of gratitude to Saudi Arabia for the gift of five million euros that the kingdom made to the institute.

Then an unusual event took place in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the most important site to French Catholics. Beneath its immense vaults, a small group of men in traditional Saudi clothes viewed the sculptures there. The delegation was led by Mohammed al-Issa, Secretary General of the World Islamic League, appointed about a year ago as the head of this organization, based in Mecca and devoted to the promotion of Islam throughout the world. As the newspaper La Croix noted:

“Saudi Arabia is one of the most conservative Muslim countries in the world. No religion other than Islam is recognized there. Clergy other than Muslims do not have the right to practice there and the construction of places of worship other than mosques is prohibited”.

So, Christian French authorities are opening their holiest sites to Islamists — as they do to everyone. These Saudis, however, prohibit others from practicing their faith in Saudi Arabia. This is “French suicide”, as Éric Zemmour warns in his most famous book, Le suicide français.

The Saudi crown prince just bought Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Salvator Mundi,” for a record $450 million at auction last month. Then, the United Arab Emirates tweeted that the painting “is coming to the Louvre Abu Dhabi”, recently opened by Macron. What else of its heritage will Europe now sell?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Categories: France, Islamisation of France, Macron, Macron and Arab states, Macron and Islam
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