Posted tagged ‘Israeli settlements’

Trump and Sisi discuss Middle East peace

December 23, 2016

Trump and Sisi discuss Middle East peace, Israel National News, Elad Benari, December 23, 2016

trumpandsisiTrump and Sisi meet in New YorkReuters

“The presidents agreed on the importance of affording the new U.S. administration the full chance to deal with all dimensions of the Palestinian case with a view of achieving a full and final settlement,” he added.

Sisi recently praised Trump and said he expected greater engagement in the Middle East from his administration.

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday night spoke with U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump, Sisi’s office said, according to Reuters.

The call came hours after the UN Security Council postponed indefinitely a vote on Egypt’s draft resolution denouncing Israeli “settlements”.

“During the call they discussed regional affairs and developments in the Middle East and in that context the draft resolution in front of the Security Council on Israeli settlement,” said Sisi’s spokesman, Alaa Yousef.

“The presidents agreed on the importance of affording the new U.S. administration the full chance to deal with all dimensions of the Palestinian case with a view of achieving a full and final settlement,” he added.

Thursday’s vote on the UN Security Council resolution was reportedly postponed after Sisi instructed his nation’s delegation to push for a delay in the vote.

Trump had earlier called for the United States to veto the resolution, as it has traditionally done with similar proposals. American officials indicated that the Obama administration was planning to abstain from voting or even to vote yes.

Sisi recently praised Trump and said he expected greater engagement in the Middle East from his administration.

The Egyptian President has also been at the forefront of the effort to resume talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, having several months ago urged Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to seize what he said was a “real opportunity” for peace and hailed his own country’s peace deal with Israel.

The comments were welcomed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who stressed that “Israel is ready to participate with Egypt and other Arab states in advancing both the diplomatic process and stability in the region.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman welcomed Sisi’s call as well, saying he welcomed the Egyptian president’s efforts to achieve peace and establish a Palestinian state.

Egypt scuttles UN vote on Israeli settlement after Trump warning

December 23, 2016

Egypt scuttles UN vote on Israeli settlement after Trump warning, Washington Examiner, Joel Gehrke. December 22, 2016

Trump’s statement might have had the greatest influence on the Egyptian decision, beyond Netanyahu’s lobbying or other American statements. “Diplomats in Tel Aviv speculating that Sisi didn’t cave because of Israel, but rather because he didn’t want to piss off incoming president,” Economist correspondent Gregg Carlstrom tweeted.

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Egyptian officials scrapped a plan to proceed with a United Nations Security Council vote condemning the construction of Israeli settlements, following pushback from Israeli officials and President-elect Trump.

“Egypt requested the vote’s delay to permit them to conduct an additional meeting of the Arab League’s foreign ministers to work on the resolution’s wording,” Haaretz reported, citing Western diplomats. But the vote might be postponed “indefinitely,” according to the report.

Israeli settlement construction drew condemnation from the State Department earlier this year, in addition to the rebukes of more customary critics, raising fears in Israel and among congressional Republicans that President Obama might not veto a resolution on the matter in the waning days of his presidency. President-elect Trump stated his opposition to the resolution, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was lobbying Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to drop the resolution.

“The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” Trump said in a statement. “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also called on the Obama administration to veto it.

Trump’s statement might have had the greatest influence on the Egyptian decision, beyond Netanyahu’s lobbying or other American statements. “Diplomats in Tel Aviv speculating that Sisi didn’t cave because of Israel, but rather because he didn’t want to piss off incoming president,” Economist correspondent Gregg Carlstrom tweeted.

Egypt is a temporary member of the UN Security Council, which is dominated by five permanent members — the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France — which have the authority to veto council resolutions. Obama used that authority to block a similar resolution condemning Israeli settlements in 2011, but his administration’s increasingly public frustration with the failure of talks between Israel and the Palestinians raised the possibility that he wouldn’t veto it this time around.

Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the appeal of a change in policy when asked about a potential resolution to be authored by French diplomats. “If it’s a biased and unfair and a resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel, we’ll oppose it,” he said at the Haim Saban Forum on December 4. “But it’s getting more complicated now because there is a building sense of what I’ve been saying to you today, which some people can shake their heads, say, well, it’s unfair.”

Kerry emphasized that the Israeli settlements in disputed territory are not the cause of violence, but he argued that were nonetheless a “barrier” to an ultimate peace that was being tolerated by the Israeli government. “I’ll tell you why I know that: because the left in Israel is telling everybody they are a barrier to peace, and the right that supports it openly supports it because they don’t want peace,” Kerry said.

Cartoons and Video of the Day

December 20, 2016

LATMA-TV via Youtube

 

H/t Power Line

hillary-excuses

 

hiollarys-cro9wds

 

hack-axe

 

obama-cut-it-out

 

lib-bitter-cloingers

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

santahacked

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

last

 

wall

 

worthless

Trump Gave Money to “West Bank” Settlement

December 19, 2016

Trump Gave Money to “West Bank” Settlement, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, December 19, 2016

The Washington Post reports that in 2003, Donald Trump gave $10,000 to “institutions in one of Israel’s oldest and most steadfast West Bank settlements.” He made the donation in honor of David Friedman, who is now Trump’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel.

I wish I had known about this before. It would have made me more supportive of Trump.

Trump’s donation was used to support schools in the Beit El settlement. According to the Post, he has donated money to many Jewish schools (yeshivas) in Israel and the U.S.

Beit El was founded in 1977. It is located on the outskirts of Ramallah, a major Palestinian population center. Approximately 1,300 Jewish families live there.

Israeli settlements are a bugaboo of the American left and of some on the center-right, as well. They are an impediment to a “peace” agreement, they say.

But Israel is a vibrant, dynamic, and growing society. The notion that its population should have remained confined to land within the pre-1967 borders in the hope that a peace agreement might one day be reached is ridiculous. One might just as well have expected Americans to confine themselves to the original 13 colonies.

The term “West Bank settlements” gives the game away. The settlements are no more on West Bank than the rest of Israel is. There is no natural barrier between the settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem and Jerusalem itself. There is no significant natural barrier between the Beit El settlement Trump supported and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Mediterranean Sea is what most Palestinians want to drive Israeli Jews into.

Israel shouldn’t be pressured into assisting Palestinians in this quest by ceding control of the West Bank. And, security concerns aside, it shouldn’t be pressured into abandoning places where its citizens have lived for nearly 40 years (in the case of Beit El).

The only salient facts about the pre-1967 borders are: (1) they were untenable and (2) they were swept away by Israel’s military victory. Losing a war has consequences. There is no exception for losing a war intended to obliterate a nation.

But let’s return to president-elect Trump. Remember when mainstream media stalwarts accused him of running an anti-Jewish campaign in order to appeal to the “alt-right”? I wonder what the “alt-right” will make of Trump’s donations to Jewish educational institutions in the U.S. and Israel.

It’s time for a narrative shift. Hence forward, until further notice, the liberal MSM will no longer portray Trump as Jew-baiting. He will now be deemed fanatically pro-Jewish.

Trump’s envoy: The new administration ‘won’t tell Israel what policies to adopt’

December 16, 2016

Trump’s envoy: The new administration ‘won’t tell Israel what policies to adopt’, Times of IsraelEric Cortellessa, December 16, 2016

WASHINGTON — Sitting in a conference room together 13 years ago, David Friedman told his friend Donald Trump that he just purchased an apartment in Jerusalem.

Trump, the real estate tycoon, was immediately curious to know the particulars. “How big was it? How much did it cost?” Friedman recalled him asking, describing the conversation during an interview last month with The Times of Israel. When Friedman cited the price, Trump was surprised.

“That’s really a lot of money,” he responded, according to Friedman’s recollection. “For that kind of money, why wouldn’t you buy a place in East Hampton? Why do you have to go all the way to Israel for a second home?”

The Long Island native’s answer was probably one that the man soon to be president was not expecting. “The world has been fighting over every inch of Jerusalem for the past 3,000 years,” Friedman told Trump. “There’s nobody fighting over East Hampton.”

Trump’s eyes then “opened up,” Friedman said, “and that initiated a decade-plus conversation about Israel.”

Now, in 2016, that exchange seems to have been more fateful than it initially seemed to Friedman, who was announced on Thursday as President-elect Trump’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Israel.

And the first move Friedman made in that official capacity was to indicate that Trump plans to follow through on his campaign pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking decades of precedent under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and underlining an apparent inclination to do what other presidential candidates have promised but declined to deliver once they took office: recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.

domeoftherockAn 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 2, 2007. (AFP/Jack Guez)

Official US policy has long been to insist that the status of Jerusalem can only be determined through a negotiated settlement between the parties, as both Israelis and Palestinians claim it as their capital.

In a statement Thursday, Friedman, a Hebrew-speaker, declared he was “deeply honored and humbled” that his friend of 15 years selected him to represent America to the Jewish state, and he also left the world with a zinger when he said he looked forward to doing his new job “from the US embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

But Friedman’s declared appetite to move the embassy is not the only reason liberal Jewish organizations have responded to his nomination with something close to horror. The 57-year-old bankruptcy lawyer has also been an outspoken and active supporter of the settlement movement, and has argued that Israel doesn’t face a “demographic threat” to its Jewish character if it fails to separate from the Palestinians.

Friedman serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, an organization that supports the large West Bank settlement near Ramallah, and over the last year, he has excoriated groups who express criticism of Israel’s settlement policy.

friedman-c2-305x172David Friedman, Donald Trump’s adviser on Israel, talks to Channel 2 News on September 12, 2016. (screen capture: Channel 2)

In June, Friedman accused J Street supporters of being “far worse than kapos” in a column for the right-wing, pro-settlement Israel National News website, using the term for Jews who aided Nazis during the Holocaust. Speaking before the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum earlier this month, he refused to walk back his comparison.

Now that he is slated to become the United States’ top diplomat in Israel — so long as the US Senate confirms his appointment — he will assume one of the most delicate positions in American foreign policy, mediating the US relationship with a close ally in an increasingly unstable region, and after eight tumultuous years of ties between the administration of President Barack Obama and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last month, Friedman spoke with The Times of Israel about what Trump’s policies and priorities would be toward the Jewish state if he won. Here is what he said.

‘No daylight’ between the US and Israel

When it comes to the US-Israel relationship, Friedman insisted that Trump would represent a sharp break from his predecessor — including in that there would be “no daylight between Israel and America,” a phrase also used in the transition team’s announcement of his selection on Thursday, which indicates a policy of keeping differences out of the public sphere.

“Donald Trump wants to be as supportive of Israel as possible,” Friedman told The Times of Israel. “He doesn’t view Israel as a client state that you just kind of issue directives to. He views Israel as a partner, one of America’s key partners in a global war against Islamic terrorism, so he wants Israel … to be as strong and secure as possible.”

Unlike Obama, who made Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank a fundamental issue of criticism throughout his presidency, Trump will not “put his finger on the scale or tell Israel what policies they should adopt,” Friedman said, adding that his new boss “doesn’t see Israel as in need of any particular correction at this point.”

That principle, he indicated, covers both how Trump will treat the settlement issue and the manner in which Israel seeks to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. The Trump administration will not “dictate to Israel where it can and cannot build” in the West Bank, according to Friedman.

Trump, for his part, has not publicly stated a position on settlements or detailed what kind of a stance he would take. The most common view among Washington’s foreign policy community, and emphatically within the Obama administration, is that, to keep the two-state option alive and ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, the US should try to limit settlement activity to the principal blocs that Israel is expected to retain under any permanent accord.

For his part, Friedman said that a Trump administration “doesn’t see much opportunity for progress until the Palestinians renounce violence and accept Israel as a Jewish state. That’s really a prerequisite.”

One criticism Friedman had of the current president was that Obama saw Israel as “strong” and the Palestinians as “weak,” and thus he believed it was up to the Israelis to take the risks necessary for peace. “Strong vs. weak is less relevant to Trump than the ‘relative conduct of the parties’,” Friedman said.

According to Friedman, Trump was influenced by seeing a video last spring of a stage production put on at a Hamas-affiliated school in Gaza. “Half the kids were dressed up as Israeli soldiers or traditional garb and the other half were dressed up as shahids, and the kids playing terrorists took their fake knives and stabbed all the Jews,” Friedman said of the film. “Fake blood poured on the stage, and the parents all applauded this. In a first grade class.”

knifeA young Palestinian girl attacks ‘Israeli soldiers’ with a knife in a play held in Gaza as part of the ‘Palestine Festival for Children and Education,’ April 2016 (Channel 2 news)

Trump, he said, sees that kind of incitement as “unacceptable and an insoluble impediment to peace.”

But didn’t Trump say he wanted to be neutral?

In February 2016, then-Republican presidential hopeful Trump called Israeli-Palestinian peace “probably the toughest agreement of any kind to make,” but vowed to give it “one hell of a shot.”

He also pledged he would do that by being “sort of a neutral guy,” when pressed by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough over whether he ascribed fault to either side for failing to reach an accord. “A lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault is it,” he said. “I don’t think it helps.”

Trump took immediate heat for this promise on the campaign trail, and seemed to indicate a walk-back during his speech at the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference and elsewhere, but he has not explicitly rescinded this posture.

Friedman argued, however, that his language has been misunderstood. “What he was really referring to was trying to sponsor negotiations that would take place without preconditions,” he said. “That was what he viewed as neutrality, and that’s frankly been the view of the Israeli government for some time.”

Friedman cited Obama’s demand in his first term that Netanyahu place a moratorium on all West Bank settlement construction, as a trust-building measure, to be “an example of the absence of neutrality, but it’s in favor of the Palestinians against the Israelis.”

And what about that two-state solution?

As one of Trump’s top two Israel advisers at the time, along with Jason Dov Greenblatt, Friedman said the candidate had not yet decided exactly how he’d go about handling Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, but that he would be open to new ideas, including embracing avenues outside the two-state framework.

Friedman stated that, in his discussions with Trump, “a two-state solution is not a priority. I don’t think he is wed to any particular outcome. A two-state solution is a way, but it’s not the only way.”

Unlike the last three presidents, who have tried to push both parties into negotiating a compromise, Trump will let the Israel make its determinations without pressure from the US, said Friedman.

“A Trump administration will try to be helpful with the Israelis bringing stability to the region, to make it as quiet as possible, as peaceful as possible, and ultimately to come up with a long-term solution,” he said. “As far as what that solution is, Trump will be guided by the Israelis’ view, very much so, and will not be seeking to impose any particular path upon the Israeli government.”

UN Committee to Vote on Blacklist Against Israel-Linked Companies

December 10, 2016

UN Committee to Vote on Blacklist Against Israel-Linked Companies, The Jewish PressHana Levi Julian, December 10, 2016

Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, speaks at the Conference for Fighting Anti-Semitism, at the Begin Center in Jerusalem, on January 31, 2016. Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash90 *** Local Caption *** ??? ???? ????? ????? ???? ??? ????????? ??????? ???? ????

Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, speaks at the Conference for Fighting Anti-Semitism, at the Begin Center in Jerusalem, on January 31, 2016. Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash90

A budget and administration committee within the United Nations is set to vote next week on a blacklist against firms with ties to Israel.

The UN “Fifth Committee” is scheduled to vote on funding for the blacklist, which names Israeli and international firms with offices located in post-1967 areas of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights.

The black list was initiated this past March in a resolution approved in 32-0 vote (15 abstentions) by member states at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. According to a report published Friday in Haaretz, the resolution required UN ‘human rights officials’ to create a database of “all business enterprises” that have enabled or profited from the growth of Israeli settlements.

Proposed and sponsored by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab nations, it includes a condemnation of ‘settlements’ and a call for companies not to work with Israeli communities in post-1967 areas.

The blacklist, to be updated annually, is expected to become a useful tool for activists in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon.

Israel’s mission to the UN will publicly oppose the list, Danon said. The envoy added that he intends to organize a task force comprised of international pro-Israel organizations and other partners to fight the move.

“We will not be silent in the face of this shameful initiative,” said Danon. “The UN’s intent to mark Jewish businesses and international companies with ties to Israel, so that they can boycott them, reminds us of dark times in history.

“The Human Rights Council has already become notorious as an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel entity.

“But it’s unacceptable for the UN itself to continue to support this despicable decision,” Danon added.

The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs

October 31, 2016

The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, October 31, 2016

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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem recently appeared before a special session of the United Nations Security Council, excoriating Israel and pleading with the body to act against Israel’s settlements.

In 1975, the UN famously declared that “Zionism is racism” and, four decades later, the organization continues to hound Israel. In each of the last four years, as the Syrian bloodbath claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, there were at least five times as many resolutions condemning Israel as those rebuking the rest of the world.

The UN’s cultural body, UNESCO, recently passed a motion ignoring any Jewish (or Christian) historical ties to East Jerusalem holy sites, referring to the Temple Mount and Western Wall only by their Muslim names and condemning Israel as “the occupying power.” It turns out that some of Israel’s left-wing NGOs worked to help produce the UNESCO motion.

Given the UN’s chronic hostility, efforts by Israeli NGOs to persuade the UN to act against Israel are arguably treasonous. Indeed, one attorney and activist for Israel’s left-leaning Labor party filed a police complaint alleging treason against B’Tselem, arguing that the NGO has harmed state sovereignty, tried to give land away to a foreign entity, and taken steps that could cause a war.

Israeli democracy is extremely tolerant, to the point of allowing its members of parliament to openly support terrorism and terrorist groups. Last March, several Israeli Arab Knesset members condemned Arab states for labeling Hizballah a terrorist organization, even though it has been at war with Israel for decades and regularly threatens new hostilities.

Last February, members from the Joint (Arab) List paid a solidarity visit to relatives of Palestinian terrorists security forces killed to stop them from murdering Israelis. In 2014, MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) drew praise from Hamas by asserting that the kidnappers of three missing Israeli youths were “not terrorists.” Hamas’s connection to the young men’s abduction and murder helped to spark the third war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Thus, Israel already has plenty of dissenting voices and activists without foreign intervention. Nevertheless, foreign interests have identified Israeli NGOs as the soft underbelly of Israeli democracy and have leveraged them to promote their own agendas. The problem became so acute that a watchdog, NGO Monitor, was formed in 2002 to track the self-hostility being funded largely by European and other foreign sources. As the organization notes: “NGOs lack a system of checks and balances, and…provide accountability to their funders and activist members, and not to the citizens or societies whose lives are directly impacted by their activities.”

NGO Monitor also notes that, even though most of the foreign government funding for these Israeli NGOs is “formally designated for ‘educating the Israeli public’ and ‘changing public opinion’ (both in violation of the norms on non-interference in other democracies), these Israeli NGOs are very active externally, in the delegitmization and political warfare against Israel.”

These left-wing Israeli NGO’s receive money from about two dozen foreign governments, and some private organizations. That includes millions of dollars from billionaire George Soros.

In Catch the Jew, author Tuvia Tenenbom exposed how foreign-funded “human rights” and “cultural” organizations in Israel tend to serve as vehicles for attacking Israel. By presenting himself to interview subjects as “Tobi the German,” Tenenbom elicits some surprising confessions. For example, the New Fund for Cinema and TV, a foreign-funded Israeli cultural NGO, told him that that about 80 percent of political documentaries made in Israel are co-produced by Europeans. That includes a documentary called “10%—What Makes a Hero,” which equates Israel’s military with the Nazis. Such films would be too scandalous to be produced in Germany, but German-sponsored NGOs can safely pay left-wing Israelis to make such movies.

Some foreign funders of Israeli NGOs have even unwittingly enriched Hamas. Last August, Hamas allegedly siphoned off “tens of millions of dollars” from World Vision, a U.S.-based charity, and used the funds for weapons purchases, tunnel construction, and other military activities.

The Knesset passed a law in July requiring disclosure of foreign funding sources for NGOs that get more than half of their money from overseas. The law is “clearly aligned with the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” wrote legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich.

“Israel is unique in the sheer scale of the foreign government sponsorship of domestic political groups,” he wrote. “For example, the European Union alone has in recent years given roughly 1.2 million Euro a year for political NGOs in the US and roughly an order of magnitude more in Israel—a vastly larger per capita amount.”

The Obama administration opposes foreign influence only when that influence promotes a dissenting view. President Obama opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress against the Iranian nuclear deal, but was happy to give a speech to the UK parliament against Brexit. The Obama administration critiqued Israel’s NGO-funding-disclosure law, even though it sent U.S. taxpayer money to an Israeli NGO working to oust Israel’s prime minister.

The same hypocrisy seems to prevail among Israel’s foreign-funded NGOs. They ostensibly exist to promote democracy and peaceful co-existence, but are conspicuously silent when Palestinian institutions violate those ideals. Such silence enables abuse by Palestinians and promotes a distorted and incomplete picture of the complex reality in which Israelis operate. Foreign-funded Israeli NGOs remained silent  after the Palestinian Authority arrested Palestinians who visited a Sukkah in a symbolic peace event promoting coexistence.

“These organizations are silent when the Palestinian leadership pays salaries to the families of terrorists, glorifies murderers and calls streets and city centers after them,” Netanyahu said. “These organizations prove again and again that they are not actually interested in human rights, but only in shaming Israel and libeling it around the world.”

If Israel’s left-wing NGOs truly are committed to democracy and peace, why haven’t they condemned the PA’s efforts to prevent “normalization” with Israel? In 2014, Jibril Rajoub, the deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and the head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, condemned a coexistence-promoting soccer match between Israeli and Palestinian youths on a southern kibbutz, as “a crime against humanity.”

Last week, a Palestinian newspaper came under intense criticism for publishing an interview with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The Jerusalem-based newspaper Al-Quds was denounced by Hamas, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the supposedly “moderate” PA. The “chilling effects” and anti-peace message implicit in the harsh reactions to the interview have yet to catch the attention of any left-wing NGOs supposedly working for peace and democracy.

If you love America and Israel, vote against the system

October 31, 2016

If you love America and Israel, vote against the system, Israel National News, Naomi Ragen, October 31, 2016

I can certainly see why women, including Jewish women, would prefer a seemingly well-spoken, mature senior stateswoman, to a brash, loud-mouthed political neophyte who has made so many off-handed offensive locker-room comments about women.

This would be your instinct.

How lovely, how easy, it would be then, to vote in a woman running against a man like that.

And how disastrously wrong.

I’ll give you the facts, but honestly, past experience does not leave me hopeful. Eight years ago, to tried to deter people from following their instinct
and voting in Barack Hussein Obama, the most anti-Israel president in U.S. history. But even after I made people aware he spent twenty years in an
anti-Semitic church, and was being advised by the likes of Rashid Khalidi, Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor), pro-Hamas negotiator Robert Malley, UN Ambassador Samantha Power (who once suggested using American troops to guard Palestinians from Israelis), most Jews still voted for Obama.

Why? because they were brainwashed by lying, anti-Israel media to the extent that their instinct told them that what was important above all else was to elect a Black man: Their “instinct” told them how noble, how liberal to cast that vote! And if they didn’t, they were racists. In fact, many people lambasted me for writing “Barack Hussein Obama”. “Hussein,” why did you write that!!

Because it was his name, I answered.I wonder how that worked out for them. I can tell you how it worked out for us in Israel: our biggest enemy and the world’s foremost supporter of terror is now unimpeded in its rush towards nuclear weapons to destroy the next six million Jews.

I wonder sometimes, how these voters live with these consequences.  And now, Barack Hussein Obama and all the EXACT SAME PEOPLE are urging you to vote for Hillary Clinton, who proudly bragged online that she was the true author of the Iran deal, making you feel like a racist, a woman-hater, an idiot, and worse if you don’t.

Repentance is being in exactly the same situation and acting differently. For those who continue down the same road, there is no hope.

So, I’m going to give you some reasons to take a different path. For the sake of the safety and security of the State of Israel, and for the love of what was once the world’s greatest democracy, our beloved United States of America, I hope to change your mind from  possibly making the biggest mistake of
your life.

Hillary Clinton isn’t a friend of Israel

In November 1999, Clinton publicly appeared with Yasir Arafat’s wife Suha and listening quietly while the token bride of the world’s biggest terrorist scumbag accused Israel of using poison gas and chemical contaminants on the water supply wells against Palestinians. In response, Clinton hugged and kissed Suha. Days later, after outraged fallout, Clinton called ‘FOR ALL SIDES to refrain from ‘INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC.”Although Clinton had to please pro-Israel voters when running for the Senate in New York, hints about her real mindset can be gleaned from a careful reading of her book Hard Choices: “When we left the city and visited Jericho in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted. [p.302] …There has been nearly a decade of terror, arising from the second intifada…Three times as many Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured in the same period [as Israelis].”

This equating of murderers and murderees, victims and perpetrators has long been the code speak of The New York Times and other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bigots.

And before you point to this or that pro-Israel thing she said, please check the dates: Was it, by chance, between 2001-2009 when she needed the votes of New York Jews?

Because when she left the Senate and became Secretary of State for the most anti-Israel President in the history of our country, the façade got dropped like a hot potato. The first thing she did was throw out an agreement with Israel during the Bush administration, calling for new restrictions on building Jewish homes in existing neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Hillary Clinton is funded by Israel-haters.

But like the chicken and the egg, what came first, Hillary’s anti-Israel perspective, or the money that Israel-haters have been pouring into Clinton Foundation coffers? Or perhaps, she and her husband will take money from anyone, and it was just a lucky coincidence her funders shared
her views?

Saudi Arabia donated ten million dollars to the Clinton Library in 2007 and another $25 million to the Clinton Foundation in June 2016, while individuals close to the Saudi family Nasir Rashid and Friends of Saudi Arabia donated millions more. Clinton’s State Department approved a $29 billion sale of fighter jets to Israel’s enemy Saudi Arabia against Israel’s vociferous objections. Coincidence?

Dubai – The Clinton Foundation has established Dubai Study departments in major U.S. and British Universities.Qatar gave millions to the
Clinton Foundation.In 2014, President Shimon Peres accused Qatar of being “the world’s largest funder of terror: Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” Peres told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. Just this past August, Qatar pledged and additional $31 million to Gaza.

On August 15, 2016 Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to the Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that Qatar was the recipient of approximately $271 million in military related export deals. During Clinton’s tenure Qatar was the recipient of approximately $4.3 billion altogether – a 1,482 % increase [in military exports] while Saudi Arabia saw a 97% increase in military exports.

In August 2014 Hillary Clinton wrote to her campaign manager John Podesta that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the area.”

Clinton advisors are anti -Israel

Clinton’s advisors, like Obama’s, have always been uniformly and virulently anti-Israel. They have her ear.

Sidney Blumenthal, Observer’s Ken Sliverstein, wrote recently, is the “ most dishonest, amoral political hatchet man of modern political times.” He is also one of Hillary’s closest friends and a highly paid advisor to her about Israel.

In 2010 he wrote her to “hold Bibi’s feet to the fire….” He told Clinton to “remind AIPAC…that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion.” Soros-funded anti-Israel J Street should be praised, he offers. In May Blumenthal wrote her, hinting that the raid on the Gaza flotilla was
deliberately organized to kill the peace process and embarrass Obama. Hillary forwarded this message with the words: “FYI and I told you so,” to her deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan at the State Department.

Blumenthal’s son Max is an even more self-hating Jew. In 2013, Max appeared in ninth place on that year’s Simon Wiesenthal Center list of
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs, for equating Israel with the Nazi regime and “approving characterizations of Israeli soldiers as ‘Judeo-Nazis.’” This is what Hillary had to say in e-mails about Max and his work:

8.17/2010  Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”

4/7/2011  Will Max’s piece be posted anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.”

9/13/2012  “Your Max is a mitzvah.”

This is what the “mitzvah” wrote when Elie Wiesel died:  “Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a defender of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.”

As most of you know, because even the mainstream media couldn’t hide it, Hillary Clinton deliberately ignored her responsibility and the rules, and created a private e-mail server that left highly sensitive, classified security documents vulnerable to hacking by America’s enemies.

But Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote something which has mostly been overlooked: “The Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets – that was incidental. She set up the server to keep secret the details of the Clinton’s private life – a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation. Had Secretary Clinton kept the Foundation at arm’s length while in office –as obvious ethical standards would have dictated – there would never have been any need for a private server or even private email.”

She had much to hide. Other leaked emails make it clear that under Hillary, the State Department took SPECIAL CARE OF DONORS TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION. In 2010 a senior State Department aide to Clinton asked a Foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with Haitian earthquake victims were FOB (Friends of Bill) or WJC VIPS (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs) “Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website,” Strassel concludes.

Trump is the only one with the guts to have publicly stated she should be in jail for these things.

We could forgive Mrs. Clinton many things, though, if we were convinced she had any core values at all. As she cheerfully admitted in a paid speech to Goldman Sachs, she takes two positions, public and private, on every issue, depending on her audience. She is for and against trade agreements that will lose Americans jobs. She is for and against Wall Street corruption.

Hillary’s Immigration Policy endangers your family

Hillary Clinton supports unlimited immigration of unvetted Muslim immigrants, which will fundamentally change the character of the US, and will endanger Jews, Christians, and ordinary citizens by exposing them to increased levels of anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred, and acts of random, hate-based violence.

All you need to do to verify that statement, is to study the statistics of other Western countries that have allowed themselves to accept a huge influx of Muslim immigrants.

In the British capital alone, anti-Semitic incidents increased by more than 60 percent over the past year, while worldwide anti-Semitism was up by 40%.

“Many refugees come from countries where Israel is an enemy; this resentment is often transferred to Jews in general,” a delegation of German Jews told Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year.For American Jews, who have much to fear both as an individual community, and as part of the larger American population, this is the last chance to actually influence this process. As an Israeli who got brainwashed by progressives to paint doves and let Arafat arm “police” and pull down border checks, and then almost got blown up during the Passover Seder at the Park Hotel, I am telling you this is a life or death issue for you and your families. If you let yourself become brainwashed and complacent, which is what we Israelis did, and vote for this policy and this politician with her appalling track record, the consequences could be horrible. Believe me, I know.

Hillary Clinton is part of an immoral establishment that is destroying America and endangering Israel

Let me admit upfront: I loathe and mistrust The New York Times, NPR, CNN, LA Times, Washington Post Politico, etc. all of whom have lied about Israel, lied about terrorism, lied about Wall Street, lied and covered up Barack Hussein Obama’s incompetence.

A victory for Hillary Clinton is a victory for them and the system they support and the America they’ve created: a weak, bankrupt, racially divided nation of too many homeless, jobless, hopeless people, weighted down by bureaucracy, preyed upon by white collar criminals, unsafe in their cities and homes and schools and unprotected from brazen murdering, raping thugs and terrorists – both homegrown and imported.

It has become a place where veterans are neglected and police are attacked and hounded by the country they give their lives to protect every day. A place where health care is endangered for all by a system that simply doesn’t work.

The establishment that created this chaos would like nothing better than a citizenry that is complacent and stupid, easily swayed by epithets and ugly but irrelevant sound bites .

I prefer Trump because he has never been part of that system. He isn’t a politician. He isn’t afraid to say the things we all believe about the rigged
media, the backroom money deals, the pay for play, Islamic terrorism, unvetted immigration, a border wall, and despicable late term abortions.

A vote for him is a vote against what has happened to America under Barack Hussein Obama and against the political, corporate, and media empires that backed him and brought him to power and want Hillary to take his place.

Look at the facts. Don’t be part of the Punch and Judy show, manipulated by the puppet-masters. Vote against the system. Vote against corruption. Vote for real democracy and real, not fake, change.

Palestinians: Abbas “The Jew”

October 7, 2016

Palestinians: Abbas “The Jew”, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, October 7, 2016

The unprecedented outcry over Abbas’s participation in the funeral of an Israeli leader is further proof of the degree to which Palestinians have been radicalized.

This is what happens when you unleash a tidal wave of hate against Israel and its leaders in the media, mosques and public rhetoric. In light of this brainwashing, how do you expect your people to respond when you, in any way, associate with an Israeli leader?

If attending the funeral of an Israeli leader, especially one who devoted the past two decades of his life to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, draws such condemnation, it is easy to imagine the result of a Palestinian leader making a peace overture to Israel.

Even if the current condemnation eventually dies down, it will have sent a message to future Palestinian leaders: “No peace with Israel, not in our time, and not in any time.”

 

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is facing a barrage of criticism for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. The fury directed towards Abbas comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with the unrelenting campaign of anti-Israel incitement that has been taking place for many years in Palestinian society.

If attending the funeral of an Israeli leader, especially one who devoted the past two decades of his life to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, draws such condemnation, it is easy to imagine the result of a Palestinian leader making a peace overture to Israel.

President Abbas is now receiving a dose of his own medicine. This is what happens when you unleash a tidal wave of hate against Israel and its leaders in the media, mosques and public rhetoric. This is what happens when you inform your people that Israeli leaders are “war criminals” who ought to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court. This is what happens when you drive into your people that Jews are desecrating with their “filthy feet” Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. This is what happens when you accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing”, “extra-judicial executions” and “poisoning” Yasser Arafat.

In light of this brainwashing, how do you expect your people to respond when you, in any way, associate with an Israeli leader?

1928Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the funeral of Shimon Peres, a former president of Israel, on September 30. Abbas is facing a barrage of criticism for attending the funeral, with members of his own party calling it “treason.” (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)

It is hard to believe that Abbas and his cronies were surprised by the current wave of reprobation. But the degree of vitriol was perhaps not predicted.

Abbas is now getting it from all quarters. The denunciations are coming not only from his political foes in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but also from groups and figures belonging to his ruling Fatah faction.

Palestinians say that the 81-year-old Abbas, who is now in his 11th year of his four-year term in office, is facing his most serious challenge to leadership. And there are no signs that the recriminations are subsiding. On the contrary, each day brings with it yet another flood of reproof, prompting Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah to issue a stiff warning to those who are exploiting the situation to “incite” against Abbas. However, the threats have failed to deter his critics from proceeding with their attacks on him and calling on him to step down.

One of those who have already paid a price for criticizing Abbas’s attendance of the Peres funeral is Lieutenant Colonel Osama Mansour, who holds a senior position in the PA’s Military Liaison Apparatus. In a post on Facebook, the PA officer strongly condemned Abbas’s move:

“If you alone decided to participate in the funeral of the killer of our sons, then you erred. And if you took the decision on the basis of what you were told by your advisors, then they have misled you.”

Hours after the post appeared on Facebook, Mansour was suspended from his job. Later, he was arrested by PA Military Intelligence Service officers who raided his house and conducted a search, during which they destroyed furniture, according to his family. A PA court has since ordered Mansour remanded into custody for fifteen days.

The suspension and subsequent arrest of the officer sparked a new wave of rage against Abbas and his security forces. Palestinians took to social media to protest the crackdown on the officer, hailing him as a hero and denouncing Abbas as a “dog” and Israeli “collaborator.” Some suggested that the officer was worthy of being appointed as a minister in the PA Cabinet for his courageous remarks.

But the move against the senior officer did not deter many Abbas loyalists from coming out against him for going to the funeral of Peres.

Fatah’s “Youth Movement,” known in Arabic as Al-Shabiba, issued a statement calling on Abbas to “apologize” to the Palestinians for committing a “grave mistake.” Abbas’s participation in the funeral was “humiliating and degrading” for the Palestinians and a form of “treason,” according to the statement. The group pointed out that Abbas’s move was in violation of Fatah’s regulations, which envisage the “full liberation of Palestine and eliminating Israeli occupation economically, politically, militarily and culturally.” Addressing Abbas, the group stated:

“Mr. President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas. You have committed a crime against our people by equating the executioner with the victim. We will not allow treason to become a viewpoint.”

Several senior Fatah officials sought to distance themselves from Abbas’s decision to attend the funeral of Peres by claiming that they had not been consulted beforehand.

One of them, Tawfik Tirawi, who previously served as commander of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service in the West Bank, announced that he was personally opposed to Abbas’s gesture. He clarified that Abbas did not seek the opinion of the Fatah leadership before he went to the funeral:

“Had I been personally consulted as a member of the Fatah Central Committee, I would have made it clear that I am against participation in principle, because this is a funeral of a Zionist who wallowed, from head to toe, in the blood of our people and other Arabs.”

Tirawi went on to describe Peres as the “engineer of the Israeli nuclear project which is designed to foil any plan to retrieve our land.”

The widespread protests against Abbas’s decision to participate in Peres’s funeral took a violent turn on October 3, when PA policemen used force to break up a peaceful demonstration in Ramallah. Organized by the PFLP, the protest was yet another sign of the strong sentiments many Palestinians harbor not only against Abbas, but also Israel.

Palestinian lawyer Muhanad Karajeh, who works for a Ramallah-based human rights organization, reported that he was asked by the organizers to be present in order to document the event. The lawyer stated he was severely beaten by PA security officers during the protest. “I was repeatedly beaten in the face and different parts of the body,” he recounted. “I know some of the officers personally. They tore my suit although I told them I am a lawyer. They humiliated me and cursed me and my profession.”

In a desperate act to counter the spreading protests, Abbas’s aides organized impromptu marches in support of the Palestinian Authority president. The PA leadership summons Fatah activist-thugs to take to the streets whenever it feels the heat. Carrying photos of Abbas and the yellow Fatah flags, scores of Fatah members marched in the streets of Ramallah in a show of force and as a message of warning to those who would censure Abbas. “We stand behind our historic leadership and President Abbas,” declared top Fatah activist Osama Qawassmeh. “Fatah is a red line and it is facing a conspiracy.”

On social media, the attacks on Abbas were quite ruthless. Palestinian activists circulated cartoons ridiculing Abbas. One of them depicted Abbas as a rabbi in Israeli military uniform and a Jewish skullcap weeping next to Peres’s grave. Another cartoon featured an Arab laying a wreath on a boot next to Peres’s photo.

On Twitter, activists launched hashtags called, “Offering Condolences On the Death of Peres is Treason” and “Normalization is Treason.”

Hamas was not silent about Abbas’s “treason.” Mahmoud Zahar, one of the leaders of the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, opined that according to Islamic teachings, Abbas qualifies as a Jew. “We hope that he will join Peres in Hell,” Zahar said. “Abbas is an Israeli product. The man who claims to represent all the Palestinian people has stood up against all Palestinians and Arabs.”

A large group of Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and political activists signed a petition calling on Abbas to apologize for attending the Peres funeral, characterizing the move as an “historic and political mistake.” At least 150 Palestinians and Arabs signed the petition, which stressed that Abbas’s decision came as a “shock” to Palestinians.

The protests have, meanwhile, spread to Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab countries. At the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians chanted slogans calling for the removal of Abbas from power. The protest came during a funeral of a Palestinian man who had been shot dead a week earlier by Palestinian Authority policemen.

The unprecedented outcry over Abbas’s participation in the funeral of an Israeli leader is further proof of the degree to which Palestinians have been radicalized. Frustration with Abbas and his policies is not new. More and more Palestinians have in recent years expressed rage over his “lenient” policies towards Israel. A particular bone in their throat is the continued security coordination between PA security forces and Israel. They perceive this cooperation with the Israelis as “treasonous”. Many Palestinians are also angry with Abbas for his refusal to share power and pave the way for the emergence of new leaders.

The blame for the radicalization of the Palestinian people lies squarely at the feet of Abbas and the rest of the PA. If you promote boycotts of Israel, expect to be attacked when you break that boycott by associating with any Israeli, alive or dead. Protests tend to subside, but even if the current condemnation eventually does die down, it will have sent a message to future Palestinian leaders. The message is: “No peace with Israel, not in our time, and not in any time.”

Obama, criticizing Jewish settlements in Middle East, pushes Muslim settlements in US

October 6, 2016

Obama, criticizing Jewish settlements in Middle East, pushes Muslim settlements in US, American ThinkerEd Straker, October 6, 2016

President Obama criticized Israel for constructing new settlements in what Israel calls Judea and Samaria and what the Palestinians call the West Bank.

In an uncommonly harsh statement, the State Department “strongly condemned” the move, asserting that it violated Israel’s pledge not to construct new settlements and ran counter to the long-term security interests Israel was seeking to protect. …

The new settlement, one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank, is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished.

Settlements have poisoned the relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu from the earliest days of the administration. Mr. Obama demanded that Israel halt construction as a gesture to draw the Palestinians back to the bargaining table. Mr. Netanyahu complained that the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, frittered away most of the 10-month moratorium before sitting down to talk.

Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years.  In more recent times, the area became depopulated because of repeated pogroms, or massacres, of Jews by the Palestinians.  Now Jews are moving back to Judea.  They are not taking any homes from Palestinians; rather, they are setting up shop on empty hilltops, turning barren desert into homes, farms, schools, and businesses.

Obama sees that as a threat.  He isn’t bothered by Arabs living in Israel, but he wants territory he has unilaterally decided belongs to the Palestinians to be Judenrein, or free of Jewish people.

Curiously, Obama also has no problem with Muslim settlements in America.  In fact, he aggressively pushes them.  He has given green cards to over a million Muslims in his eight-year presidency.  Many of these Muslims live in insular communities one could call “settlements.”

The differences between these Muslim settlements in America and Jewish settlements in the Middle East are striking.  The Israelis are moving into and developing unoccupied land.  The Muslims coming here are taking homes that could be occupied by Americans.  The Israelis support themselves and do not take money from their Arab neighbors. Many of the Muslims who come here go on welfare and are supported by the American taxpayer.  And most importantly, the Israelis in settlements do not go out and kill people.  Nor do they impose their religion on others.  That is an important difference from some of the Muslim immigrants we take here.

And yet Obama has no qualms about expanding Muslim settlements in America.  As their numbers grow, we will start to have “no go” zones like Muslim enclaves in Paris and London.  Obama calls the Jewish homes a threat to peace, but it is some of the Muslims in America who are a threat to peace, as we have seen in mall shootings, workplace shootings, and bombings, just to take a few of the most recent examples.

The hypocrisy of Obama pushing this kind of “diversity” in America while declaring Judea Judenrein is inescapable.