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SATIRE | Obama Blames Russia For Exposing Anti-Israel Move

December 31, 2016

Obama Blames Russia For Exposing Anti-Israel Move, Arizona Conservative, John Semmens, December 31, 2016

With a rash of news stories popping up contradicting the Obama Administration’s denial that the recent UN vote against Israeli settlements was, in fact, organized and led by Administration officials, President Obama charged the Russians with “once again exposing communications that were intended to remain private.”

One of these “private communications” entailed Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with senior Palestinian diplomat Saeb Erekat to coordinate strategy for advancing the UN censure of Israel. Another was Vice President Joe Biden’s phone call pressuring Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to vote for the censure.

“The revelation of official matters intended to remain confidential is precisely the same MO of the Russian hackers who tipped the recent US presidential election toward Moscow’s puppet—Donald Trump,” Obama contended. “This further provocation is an act so hostile that it qualifies as an act of war. Clearly, the retaliatory measures we have implemented thus far have been insufficient to deter our country’s greatest enemy.”

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the International Committee of the Russian Upper House of Parliament, called Obama’s actions “the agony of not only a lame duck, but of a political corpse.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to retaliate in response to the Obama Administration’s expulsion of Russian diplomats was labeled “yet another diabolical and sinister effort to mislead the American public,” Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest charged. “Imitating a reasonable demeanor in order to make President Obama appear hysterical and unhinged is meant to drive a wedge between him the people who have loved and admired him during his term in office. It won’t work. Americans will rally behind their President just as Americans rallied behind FDR after Pearl Harbor.”

Earnest’s prediction seemed to be born out when Republican Sens. John McCain (Az) and Lindsey Graham (SC), demanded an even stronger retaliatory response toward Russia. “I didn’t spend seven years in a Communist POW camp in Vietnam only to sit idly and let the Soviet Union mock our President,” McCain blustered. Graham called for “an internationally enforced ‘no fly zone’ that would shoot down any Russian military aircraft operating outside the borders of their country.”

President-Elect Donald Trump’s attempt to assert a plea for everyone “to remain calm until adults are in charge after the inauguration,” was labeled “another example of his lack of fitness,” by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). “At a time when patriots ought to be backing our President, Trump is showing he has more in common with our enemy.”

In related news, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and two-time contributor to Obama’s successful election campaigns, denounced the Administration’s anti-Israel stance as “an appalling betrayal by a man I was twice duped into trusting.”

Categories: Israel, Israeli settlements, Obama and Israel, Obama and Russia, Obama and the UN, President Elect Trump, Satire, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
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John Kerry with popcorn

December 31, 2016

John Kerry with popcorn, Israeli National News, Jack Engelhard, December 31, 2016

I suppose Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” will have to be re-spooled. So will a hundred more Bible-themed films.

With a simple abstention on the part of Samantha Power at the UN, the history of the world has been rewritten.

Jewish and Christian cultures have been cleansed out of existence…and will remain so until Donald Trump fixes this and brings the United States back to its senses.

Apparently the Bible got it all wrong and so did Hollywood, according to Barack Obama, John Kerry and Security Council Resolution 2334, which denies Jewish rights to Judea/Samaria and Jerusalem and instead hands all of it over to the Palestinian Arabs (who were invented in 1964, by the way).

So as of Friday, December 23, when that maneuver was passed by the UN, no Jews fit the picture. Only Arabs may answer the casting call as stars and extras.

DeMille made two versions of the Biblical Exodus, the first in 1923 and then again in 1956. Both times, using Jewish and Christian theologians as technical advisers, he used the Hebrew Bible as a blueprint – and both times those were Hebrews emerging from slavery in Egypt onward toward the Promised Land that was first Canaan and finally Judea/Israel.

The heroes were Jews. No Palestinian Arabs in sight.

So what’s to be done when we watch those films again – by which I also mean Otto Preminger’s 1960s “Exodus” and Melville Shavelson’s 1966 “Cast A Giant Shadow” where this time it’s about modern Israel being re-captured and still the heroes are Jews – as principally played by Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas.

Can we still cheer? Can we still be entertained? Can we still learn? How – when everything has been turned upside down?

To moviegoers, is Moses still a hero? Is King David still a hero, as depicted in the 1951 film “David and Bathsheba,” starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward.

Again, no Palestinians in sight, and no demands for a two state solution from either the Bible or Hollywood.

Or are we to root for Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas when that movie comes out?

Arab terrorists  — who last month tried to burn Israel to the ground — are the world’s heroes.

That’s where we are today, as Sci-Fi writer Richard Matheson imagined a world taken over by mutants.

There were no Palestinians anywhere near Jerusalem for King Vidor’s 1959 epic “Solomon and Sheba,” starring Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida. Solomon builds a Jewish Temple, in Jerusalem, to fulfill the oath from his father David and according to the measurements provided by Hebrew Scriptures.

Well, that will have to be revised and rewritten, won’t it, to please Obama, Kerry, Article 2334, and the 14 nations that voted to expunge Jerusalem from Jewish sovereignty going back to the Bible. Hollywood often goes back to the Bible and now Christianity has likewise been expunged.

In movies such as “Ben-Hur and “The Robe” and “King of Kings” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told” – still no Palestinians.

All the action takes place in and around Jerusalem, which was ruled by the Romans but populated by the Jews.

But there were no Jews in Jerusalem, if you ask John Kerry…or even if you ask the entire United Nations.

Our story as told through Hollywood for Christians and Jews, must now be told from a far different point of view.

Plus the old reliable classics, if they are ever to be shown again, will never be seen with the same eyes.

So buy your popcorn and watch Yasser Arafat deliver the Sermon on the Mount, and behold Mahmoud Abbas divide the Red Sea.

The victors, as we know, write the history. The victors also write the screenplay.

But there are many more pages to go and do not bet on them having the final word.

The first and last Tycoon will not be found at MGM or Paramount Pictures or at the UN. He is keeping score and He has other plans.

Categories: Bible, Hollywood and Israel, Islam and Israel, Islam and Judaism, Israel, Jewish history, John Kerry, Obama and Israel, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
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New Yorker: Obama Out to Sabotage Trump’s Israel Policy

December 30, 2016

New Yorker: Obama Out to Sabotage Trump’s Israel Policy, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, December 30, 2016

trumpisrael

New Yorker editor David Remnick is a shameless Obama hack. He also despises Israel.

The White House has a long history of routing its spin through people like that. But the spin itself can be revealing. Here’s what Remnick is spinning about Obama’s new war on the Jewish State.

For at least two years, President Obama, frustrated by Netanyahu and by failed attempts to make serious progress on the Palestinian question, has been considering the question of legacy. Pressed by Kerry, who has shown an almost quixotic desire to press the Israelis, Obama considered laying out a framework of any future peace.

Two things.

1. Pressed by…. desire to press. Really? Just because Remnick is a hack doesn’t mean he has to write like one.

2. There’s a backdoor admission, as usual, that Israel is right about Obama being behind the UN resolution. And that Obama Inc. is lying.

Obama expected that Hillary Clinton would win the election; he thought it would be better to coördinate what sort of diplomatic gesture to make before leaving the White House…

But then came the Trump victory. The President-elect’s appointment of David Friedman, a pro-settlement bankruptcy lawyer, as the next U.S. Ambassador to Israel “had a lot of weight in the President’s thinking” about what to do next, one senior Administration official told me. The official told me that the Administration had been “alarmed” by many of Trump’s appointments to his national-security team—notably the appointment of Michael Flynn as national-security adviser—but the selection of Friedman was “over the top.”

“The last thing you want to do as you leave office is to pick a fight with the organized Jewish community, but Friedman is so beyond the pale,” the adviser said.

So, for all intents and purposes, this is an admission that Obama went to war with Israel, to sabotage Trump’s foreign policy. Never mind the rest of the spin and propaganda.

And yet is that the truth, or is Obama Inc. handing liberal Jews a sympathetic excuse for its actions. What better way to sell its war on the Jewish State than by claiming that Obama really hates Trump. Israel is just a pawn in the fight between Trump and Obama?

 The appointment of Friedman as the next U.S. Ambassador makes it plain to Netanyahu that the Trump Administration, when it takes power by law and not just by Twitter, will ease the pressure on Israel. In a Trump Administration, Friedman wrote during the campaign in the Jerusalem Post, Israel will feel “no pressure” from the United States and “there will be no daylight between the two countries.”

But then if you believe Remnick, this is what Obama really wants to sabotage.

Categories: David Friedman, Obama and Israel, Trump and Israel
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The Obama mouse that roared

December 30, 2016

The Obama mouse that roared, Israel National News, Ron Jager, December 30, 2016

(Please see also, Egyptian Daily Close To Egyptian Intelligence Reveals Minutes Of Secret Palestinian Authority Meeting With John Kerry, Susan Rice; U.S.-Palestinian Coordination On UNSC 2334; Rice Says Trump Administration’s Policy Will Be ‘Dangerous’. — DM)

Obama has been perceived for the better part of the past 8 years by many of the world’s leadership as a spineless and weak leader, never feeling comfortable or really knowing how to implement the art of statesmanship. Obama caved in to Putin, the leader of Russia, caved into Assad, the embattled leader of Syria.

China, Iran, North Korea, Libya, have all exhibited nothing but contempt for Obama who always backed down, stood down, and generally did nothing more than wag his Presidential tail.

And then there was Israel.

The objective of the recent Obama-concocted Security Council resolution against the State of Israel is nothing less than a betrayal of the US- Israel alliance and a message to Trump. The Security Council adopted a resolution that brands the Jewish presence in any part of Judea and Samaria (‘West Bank’) or in parts of Jerusalem as illegal will also make the eight hundred thousand Jews in these areas international outlaws.

However, this betrayal of Israel is in actuality Obama’s lame duck way of signaling to the new Trump administration that he has no intention of letting President-elect Trump, the democratically elected President revoke the so-called “transformation’’ that Obama has set for America over the past 8 years. Obama’s action in the UN comes from his longtime distaste for Israel and from his newly found distaste for Trump and everything that Trump stands for. Obama has a lot of “unfinished business” and primal anger concerning Trump’s victory, exposing the Democratic Party and its leader for what they are, hated by Middle America and totally detached from the traditional values of so many Americans.

Obama’s last minute stab-in-the-back of Israel is intriguing considering that he did this with full knowledge that Trump would take an opposite position within weeks. Obama’s decision was based not on strategic thinking or any political pressures of any kind. To understand what motivated Obama, in the guise of condemning Israel, America’s only longtime democratic ally in the Middle East, we must understand his deep and powerful animus against the incoming Trump administration.

Trumps’ greatest sin other than actually winning the election has been that he has exposed the true legacy of Obama. Trump, the unapologetic, wealthy, champion of Middle America is everything that Obama is not. Trump embodies Obama’s worst nightmare and is an antithesis to how Obama envisions America. He is leaving the White House knowing full well that President Trump, in Obama’s own words. will “reverse progress” of the Obama’s Presidential period.

Trump has successfully shared with all Americans the true Obama domestic legacy: BlackLivesMatter, cop killings and violence in the streets, transgenderism,  the failure and bankruptcy of Obamacare,  unrestricted immigration, terror attacks on American soil, and a 10 trillion dollar increase in national debt.

Obama has generally corrupted all three branches of government through the use of Presidential directives ignoring the authority and constitutional mandate of Congress and the Senate,  and by empowering governmental agencies such as the IRS to selectively hound organizations that did not adopt Obama’s vision of America.

Internationally, Obama’s legacy has been even worse: allowing the Islamic terror genie out of the bottle,  half a million dead in Syria, the Muslim refugee invasion of Europe which could lead to the breakup of the EU, the rise of Iran as a conventional power that is devouring one Sunni country after another, the diminution of American power and prestige enabling Russia to invade and conquer neighboring countries, and finally, legitimizing the BDS movement and the criminalization of Israel by encouraging the Security Council of the UN to make Israel a pariah state.

This showdown between Obama and Trump has been unavoidable and in the making since day one of Trump’s declaration to be elected President. The Liberal elite and intelligentsia have failed in shoving down Middle America’s throat their vision of what America should be, Obama has not yet internalized that his 8 years of empty promises and the attempted transformation of America have come to an end, with very little to show for his efforts.

In the coming 3 weeks of what remains of the Obama Presidency, President-elect Trump and the State of Israel should prepare for the worst and expect Obama to take revenge against American voters who chose Trump. He can be expected to do the same against Israel for standing up to Obama for the past 8 years exposing his nothingness, his empty beliefs and his empty panaceas that have failed one by one. Obama will continue with his political carnage until his last day in office in a manner that is unbefitting to the office of the  President.

Obama is fond of quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s line, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The Republican Party controls all three branches of government, to the detriment of everything Obama has achieved in the past eight years. President Trump will build an American tent that will include all and be a beacon to the world. Israel will succeed in rescinding the Security Council decision sooner rather than later and continue to build coalitions with neighboring Sunni nations in the coming years and maintain expanding relations with most nations of the World.

Obama will fail in his last ditch efforts to forge his vision of a brave new world, leaving nothing more than a memory of a mouse that roared.

Categories: 2016 elections, Israel, Obama and Israel, Obama and leadership, Obama and Palestinians, Obama and The World, Obama and Trump, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Israel, Trump and Middle East, Trump's America
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The Resilience of Israel

December 29, 2016

The Resilience of Israel, Town Hall, Victor Davis Hanson, December 29, 2016

bibi1

The Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel has had the odd effect of empowering Israel.

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Israel would seem to be in a disastrous position, given the inevitable nuclear capabilities of Iran and the recent deterioration of its relationship with the United States, its former patron and continued financial benefactor.

Immediately upon entering office, President Obama hectored Israel on so-called settlements. Obama promised to put “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel — and delivered on that promise.

Last week, the U.S. declined to veto, and therefore allowed to pass, a United Nations resolution that, among other things, isolates Israel internationally and condemns the construction of housing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Obama has long been at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over objections from the Obama administration, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress last year about the existential dangers of the Obama-brokered Iran deal and the likelihood of a new Middle East nuclear proliferation race.

Obama then doubled down on his irritation with Netanyahu through petty slights, such as making him wait during White House visits. In 2014, an official in the Obama administration anonymously said Netanyahu, a combat veteran, was a “coward” on Iran.

At a G-20 summit in Cannes, France, in 2011, Obama, in a hot-mic slip, trashed Netanyahu. He whined to French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “You’re tired of him? What about me? I have to deal with him every day.”

In contrast, Obama bragged about his “special” relationship with autocratic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Never mind that Erdogan seems to want to reconstruct Turkey as a modern Islamist version of the Ottoman Empire, or that he is anti-democratic while Israel is a consensual society of laws.

The Middle East surrounding democratic Israel is a nightmare. Half a million have died amid the moonscape ruins of Syria. A once-stable Iraq was overrun by the Islamic State.

The Arab Spring, U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the coup of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to regain control of Egypt, and the bombing of Libya all have left North Africa in turmoil.

Iran has been empowered by the U.S.-brokered deal and will still become nuclear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bombers blast civilians not far from Israel’s borders.

Democrats are considering Rep. Keith Ellison as the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee despite his past ties to the Nation of Islam and his history of anti-Israel remarks.

Yet in all this mess, somehow Israel is in its best geostrategic position in decades. How?

The answer is a combination of unintended consequences, deft diplomacy, political upheavals in Europe and the United States, and Israel’s own democratic traditions.

Huge natural gas and oil finds off Israel’s Mediterranean coast and in the Golan Heights have radically changed Israel’s energy and financial positions. Israel no longer needs to import costly fossil fuels and may soon be an exporter of gas and oil to needy customers in Europe and the Middle East. (America recently became the world’s greatest producer of carbon energy and also no longer is dependent on Middle Eastern oil imports, resulting in less political influence by Arab nations.) Israel is creating its own version of Silicon Valley at Beersheba, which is now a global hub of cybersecurity research.

The Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel has had the odd effect of empowering Israel.

Rich Persian Gulf states see Obama as hostile both to Israel and to themselves, while he appeases the common enemy of majority-Shiite Iran.

After a “leading from behind” U.S withdrawal from the Middle East, many Arab nations now see Israel more as a powerful ally against Iran than as an old existential enemy. They also see Israel as a country that has likewise been snubbed by America.

The idea of an Arab-Israeli understanding is surreal, but it is developing from shared fears of being targets of Iranian bombing and American indifference.

Many of Israel’s neighbors are threatened by either ISIS or al-Qaida nihilists. Those deadly dangers remind the world that democratic, free-market Israel is the sole safe port amid a rising Middle East tsunami.

Changing Western politics are empowering Israel as well.

More than 2 million migrants — for the most part, young males from the war-torn Middle East — have terrified Europe, especially after a series of radical Islamic terrorist killings. Suddenly, Europe is far more worried about Israel’s neighbors than about lecturing Israel itself.

Pushback against the Obama administration extends to its foreign policy. President-elect Donald Trump may be more pro-Israel than any recent U.S. president. And he may be the first U.S. leader to move the American embassy to Israel’s capital in West Jerusalem.For all the chaos and dangers abroad, the map of global energy, Western politics and Middle Eastern alliances has been radically redrawn.At the center is a far stronger Israel that has more opportunities than at any other time in its history. It will have an even brighter future after Obama has left office.

Categories: Israel, Israel and Middle East, Israeli economy, Israeli gas fields, Israeli security, Israeli technology, Netanyahu, Obama - Middle East, Obama and America's allies, Obama and America's enemies, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's weakness, Trump and Israel
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Bolton: Obama Didn’t Stab Netanyahu in the Back; He Did in the Front

December 27, 2016

Bolton: Obama Didn’t Stab Netanyahu in the Back; He Did in the Front, National Review via Fox News via YouTube, December 27, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tPEWTbnwrM

 

Categories: Israel, Israel settlements, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
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Dem lawmaker: Israel waging ‘war on the American government’

December 27, 2016

Dem lawmaker: Israel waging ‘war on the American government’, Washington Examiner, Kelly Cohen, December 26, 2016

(How deplorably ungrateful of wicked Israel after all that Obama has done to for her. — DM)

mcdermotRep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., says Israelis attacking Obama for not giving them ‘everything they want.’ (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”

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A retiring Democratic congressman warned that the war-of-words over the United Nations’ vote on Israel settlements is the beginning of a rhetorical “war on the American government” by Israel.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., made the comments Monday in an interview with MSNBC when asked to react to accusations that the Israeli government has proof that the Obama administration helped influence the U.N. Security Council’s vote to condemn Israeli settlements.

Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., had said earlier on MSNBC that the Israelis would be sharing the proof to the incoming Trump administration only.

“What we are seeing is the beginning of a war on the American government [by Israel],” McDermott said in response to Dermer.

“We’re seeing the air war right now, we’re seeing all these tweets, all this kind of innuendo and all these half stories, and all this stuff is to create tremendous tension,” McDermott explained.

He added that creating the tension will help President-elect Donald Trump begin the “ground war” when he takes over the White House next month. That, McDermott said, is when “his appointees begin to carry out his actions in the departments across the government.”

“The American people are being subjected to a campaign of anxiety production,” McDermott said. “And it really is very, very disturbing to watch.”

McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”

Israel is now “running their own war against us and our policies” because they are angry that Obama has pushed back against telling them to stop with settlements, McDermott said.

Categories: Democrats, Israel, Israeli settlements, Jim McDermott, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
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Bye Bye, Obama

December 26, 2016

Bye Bye, Obama, PJ Media, Michael Ledeen, December 25, 2016

(Please see also, Is real change coming to Iran? Get ready for March 15, 2017. — DM)

maddog

What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again?  The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago.  He ought to be thinking it through.

Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom.  The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.

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As I promised, as the days of Obama draw down, the jihadis are stepping up the terror tempo.  They know that there will be no reprisals from the Oahu links, and they fear Trump’s lineup of tough guys in the cabinet, so they’re in a hurry to kill infidels while the killing’s good. Therefore we, along with the other Western nations, are at maximum risk right now, until roundabouts January 20th.

And the killing’s plenty good, isn’t it?  Berlin,  Zurich, Ankara, Moscow, with a very nasty plot uncovered in Melbourne, and yet another involving terrorists in Detroit, Maryland, and Virginia.  Not to mention the ongoing slaughter in Syria, and, on Christmas day, Cameroon.

What does the “western world” do in response?  Declare the Western Wall “occupied territory.” This is no accident, since the jihadis believe that they have unleashed holy war against infidels.  That war will not end, in their view, until we infidels have been crushed and subjected to the will of a caliph.  They’ve got plenty of support from the Russians, without whom thousands of Iranians and Iranian proxies would have been killed in Syria and Iraq, and the Assad regime would have been destroyed.

That would have been a better world, but Obama did not want that world.  Nor did the feckless Europeans, who act as if profits on Iran trade compensate for the open subversion of public order.  Indeed, as Christmas arrived we were treated to the spectacle of the bishop of Rome—aka Pope Francis–blaming material misery for the jihadist assault on the West. Thus the first Jesuit pontiff surrenders the moral high ground to his mortal enemies.

Maybe Obama should convert and run for pope.

Paradoxically, the jihadis and their secular allies are launching their new assault just as they are suffering systematic setbacks on the battlefield, their own internal conflicts are intensifying, and there are signs of a religious and patriotic revival within the boundaries of their archenemy, the United States. Walter Russell Mead neatly catches the irony that, just as Obama handed the Palestinians a resounding political victory, a sober look at the situation suggests that the Palestinians have not been this weak, this divided, or this helpless in many decades.

In like manner, the Iranian regime, flush with its success in Aleppo, is increasingly riven.  Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has had two medical events in the past 10 days, and the scrambling for the succession has resumed.  You may have noticed that General Qasem Soleimani has returned to the front pages, which invariably happens when the leader is ill; the Revolutionary Guards want him as the strongman of the next regime (he can’t be supreme leader for lack of theological standing, but he could still be a dominant figure). And it isn’t all peaches and cream for Soleimani, as recent demonstrations in Tehran against the rape of Aleppo make clear. Iranian apologists love to tell us that Persian nationalism  overwhelms internal tribal and sectarian divisions, but Iran has lost thousands in Syria, and the Persian nationalists don’t like their husbands and sons dying to save Bashar Assad.

What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again?  The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago.  He ought to be thinking it through.

Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom.  The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.

You never know. Life is full of surprises.

Categories: Islamic terrorism, Islamist terror attacks, Israel, Israeli settlements, Obama and Iran, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama and The World, Palestinian state, Palestinians, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Iran, Trump and Israel, Trump appointments, Two state solution, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
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At the AP, Opinion Masquerades as Reporting

December 26, 2016

At the AP, Opinion Masquerades as Reporting, Power Line, John Hinderaker, December 26, 2016

Yesterday the Associated Press published an article by its Jerusalem bureau chief, Josef Federman, on Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to President Obama’s betrayal of Israel in the U.N. The article is an opinion piece–a virulent one, in fact. It is suitable for publication in, say, the New York Times, as an anti-Israel op-ed. The piece is headlined Israel: humbled Netanyahu places hopes in Trump. It begins:

The Israeli government’s furious reaction to the U.N. Security Council’s adoption of a resolution opposing Jewish settlements in occupied territory underscores its fundamental and bitter dispute with the international community about the future of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that there is nothing wrong with his controversial policy of building Jewish towns in occupied areas that the Palestinians, with overwhelming world support, claim for their state. But Friday’s U.N. rebuke was a stark reminder that the rest of the world considers it a crime. The embattled leader is now placing his hopes in the incoming administration of Donald Trump, which is shaping up as the first major player to embrace Israel’s nationalist right and its West Bank settlements.

Those are perhaps defensible statements of opinion, although I would argue that they are mostly incorrect. The overall thrust of the opening paragraphs–that the entire world other than Netanyahu’s administration and “Israel’s nationalist right” considers it a “crime” for Jews to live in their Biblical home of Judea Samaria, and that Donald Trump is the first “major player” to disagree, is blatantly false.

There is much more, for example:

In a series of statements, Netanyahu has criticized the Obama Administration for letting Resolution 2334 pass Friday by abstaining, using unprecedented language that has turned a policy disagreement into a personal vendetta.

Netanyahu’s language was unprecedented? What, did he call Obama a “chickens*t”? And was not Obama’s betrayal, coordinated with the Arabs and timed to avoid accountability to Congress or the voters, the culmination of a vendetta that included interference in Israel’s election to try to defeat the Prime Minister? That wasn’t a vendetta because, I suppose, Federman welcomed it.

Federman has opinions about Trump, too:

The recent diplomatic defeat would be much more damaging if not for a potential remaining and rather major ace in Netanyahu’s hand: the incoming Trump Administration.

In a striking departure from past policy of incumbent [Ed.: sic] presidents waiting on the sidelines, Trump tried to scuttle the resolution and called for a U.S. veto. After the vote, Trump vowed that “things will be different after Jan. 20th.”

So it’s Netanyahu and Trump who have disrupted the natural order of things by smashing precedents. How about this, Mr. Federman: what’s the precedent for a lame-duck president executing a major change in American foreign policy, against the wishes of Congress and the American people, less than 30 days before leaving office, in the face of no crisis or emergency, or even a change in circumstances?

Critically, he has appointed an outspoken supporter and donor to the settlements, his longtime attorney David Friedman, as ambassador to Israel. And aides say Trump is serious about a promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which even many Israelis fear could spark violence. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to sensitive religious sites, as the capital of the future state to which they aspire.

Sensitive religious sites like Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Moving the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital has been part of the Republican Party’s platform for a long time. The suggestion that having the U.S. embassy on Jerusalem, along with the Knesset, Israel’s Supreme Court and other organs of Israel’s government “could spark violence” is sheer editorializing.

Mr. Federman’s article is a typical expression of the international Left’s pro-Palestinian view of the situation in Judea and Samaria. It is, as I said, an op-ed that could easily appear in a liberal organ like the New York Times. But there is not a shred of news anywhere in it. It is merely a recitation of Federman’s opinions, with the opinions of Netanyahu, Trump and their allies erected as straw men to be struck down by others.

This conclusion was so obvious that I thought the AP must have designated the Federman article an opinion piece. But no: it went out on the wire as a straight news story. In fact, as I understand the AP’s position, it doesn’t publish opinion pieces. In fact, it cautions its reporters against expressing opinions at all:

EXPRESSIONS OF OPINION:

Anyone who works for the AP must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news. They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum, whether in Web logs, chat rooms, letters to the editor, petitions, bumper stickers or lapel buttons, and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements.

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Categories: Associated Press, Israel, Israeli settlements, Media and Israel, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Trump and Israel, UN Security Council
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Fearing UN vote on principles of Palestinian statehood, PM ‘reaching out to Trump’

December 26, 2016

Fearing UN vote on principles of Palestinian statehood, PM ‘reaching out to Trump’, Times of Israel, December 25, 2016

bibiandobamamouth(AFP/Pool/Atef Safadi)

TV reports: Netanyahu is wary that Kerry will set out parameters for permanent accord, then outgoing Obama administration will seek Security Council approval.

Amid escalating fallout from the UN Security Council vote Friday that condemned Israel’s settlement activities, a furious Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported on Sunday night to be attempting to “recruit” the incoming Trump administration and the US Congress to block a feared bid by the outgoing Obama administration to have the Security Council approve principles for a Palestinian state.

“They are spitting at us,” Netanyahu has told colleagues behind closed doors, Channel 2 news reported. “We will respond forcefully.”

Netanyahu held a 40-minute meeting with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro on Sunday evening, having summoned the envoy to explain why the US abstained in the vote on Resolution 2334, enabling it to pass 14-0, rather than vetoing it. He had earlier summoned the envoys of the 12 nations with representatives in Israel that voted for the resolution for a dressing-down at the Foreign Ministry.

Underlining Israel’s determination to press ahead with building beyond the pre-1967 lines, the Jerusalem municipality will this week approve some new homes in Ramat Shlomo and Ramot, neighborhoods captured in 1967 and subsequently annexed by Israel as part of Jerusalem, Channel 2 news reported.

Netanyahu is now reaching out to the incoming Trump administration, which takes office on January 20, and to friends in Congress, in the hope of “deterring” what he sees as further potential Obama administration-led diplomatic action against Israel, the Channel 2 report said. His aim is for the Trump team to make plain that his administration will “economically hurt” those countries that voted against Israel in the UN and that do so in the future.

bibiandfriendSeptember 25, 2016. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)

Netanyahu’s fear is that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out principles or parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech that he has said he will deliver in the next few days on his Middle East vision. The prime minister fears that, in its final days, the Obama administration will seek to have a resolution enshrining those parameters adopted by the UN Security Council, the report said.

France is to hold a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on January 15, and Netanyahu expects that Kerry will attend, that the Middle East Quartet — the US, UN, Russia and EU — will coordinate their positions at that summit, and that they will then turn to the Security Council in the very last days of the Obama presidency, a Channel 10 report further suggested.

Such speculation was not confirmed by the Prime Minister’s Office, but Netanyahu has made public his outrage at the Obama administration several times since Resolution 2334 was passed, claiming that the president initiated and helped draft the resolution “behind Israel’s back.” He has variously called the resolution skewed, shameful and ridiculous — in part because it brands Jerusalem’s Old City, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall, “occupied Palestinian territory.”

Lighting festive Hanukkah candles at the Western Wall on Sunday night, Netanyahu stressed that Israel “cannot accept” the UN resolution, and asked: “How could they vote that [the Western Wall] is occupied territory? We were here much earlier.”

In an address on Saturday night, Netanyahu had likened President Barack Obama to the former president Jimmy Carter, who he said was “deeply hostile” to Israel. He described the vote in the Security Council as “the swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel.” Now, he said, “we are entering a new era. And as President-elect Trump said, it’s going to happen a lot faster than people think.” In this new era, it will be a lot more costly for those who seek to harm Israel, he warned.

The prime minister was also widely reported Sunday to have either canceled or opted not to schedule a meeting with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos next month; his spokesman said no such meeting had ever been arranged. He was also said to have chosen not to schedule a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. He has already recalled Israel’s ambassadors from Senegal and New Zealand, two of the four countries that co-sponsored the resolution. (Israel has no ties with the other two sponsors, Malaysia and Venezuela.)

Netanyahu also reportedly told his cabinet ministers at a meeting on Sunday morning to reduce to a minimum their engagement with all the countries that voted for the resolution and with which Israel has ties — China, Russia, France, the UK, Spain, Egypt, Angola, Ukraine, Uruguay, Japan, New Zealand and Senegal. They were told to minimize any visits to those countries, and that he would not receive visits from their foreign ministers.

On Saturday, Netanyahu canceled this week’s scheduled visit to Israel of Ukraine’s prime minister.

unseccounSamantha Power, center, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, votes to abstain during a U.N. Security Council vote on condemning Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Friday, Dec. 23, 2016 at United Nations Headquarters. (Manuel Elias/The United Nations via AP)

Addressing the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his staunch opposition to Resolution 2334.

“We have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated its versions and insisted upon its passage,” he said.

Categories: Israel, Israeli settlements, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama and the UN, Palestinian state, Trump and Israel, Two state solution, US Congress
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