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Fake News About H.R. McMaster?

September 15, 2017

Fake News About H.R. McMaster? Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, September 14, 2017

(Please see also, EXCLUSIVE: Gen. McMaster Sparked a Row With the Israeli Delegation at a White House Meeting on Hezbollah. Who is pushing “fake news” and why?– DM)

I have reservations about McMaster, and PJ Media attributed its report to “several administration sources, members of non-governmental organizations involved in national security, and a source within the Israeli government.” However, the idea that McMaster and his main counter-terrorism guy are soft on Hezbollah struck me as dubious. So I checked with Steve Hayward’s friend Michael Anton, who serves as spokesman on McMaster’s staff.

Anton told me that (1) Ali wasn’t at the meeting in question (which occurred on August 17, not the week of August 27, as reported), was never scheduled to be present, and thus was never asked to leave or not attend the meeting, (2) neither McMaster nor Ali has ever questioned Hezbollah’s status as a terrorist organization, (3) McMaster has asked his staff for ideas on how to be more aggressive towards Hezbollah, and (4) the Israelis were going to issue a statement debunking PJ Media’s story.

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Yesterday, PJ Media published a disturbing report about H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser. It said that at a

meeting during the week of August 27 at the White House, McMaster brought with him Mustafa Javed Ali, NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism. According to PJ Media’s report, Ali has been described by a senior administration source as being “opposed to Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization.”

The Israelis reportedly demanded that Ali leave the room. Supposedly, they meant the demand to serve as a message to President Trump that McMaster’s behavior has subverted Trump’s stated Middle East policy.

The report also said that during the meeting, McMaster explicitly dismissed the Israelis’ specific concerns about Hezbollah. In particular, he blew off the concern that the “safe zone” currently being established within Syria would immediately become a safe haven from which Hezbollah could operate. In addition, McMaster reportedly yelled at the Israelis during the meeting.

I have reservations about McMaster, and PJ Media attributed its report to “several administration sources, members of non-governmental organizations involved in national security, and a source within the Israeli government.” However, the idea that McMaster and his main counter-terrorism guy are soft on Hezbollah struck me as dubious. So I checked with Steve Hayward’s friend Michael Anton, who serves as spokesman on McMaster’s staff.

Anton told me that (1) Ali wasn’t at the meeting in question (which occurred on August 17, not the week of August 27, as reported), was never scheduled to be present, and thus was never asked to leave or not attend the meeting, (2) neither McMaster nor Ali has ever questioned Hezbollah’s status as a terrorist organization, (3) McMaster has asked his staff for ideas on how to be more aggressive towards Hezbollah, and (4) the Israelis were going to issue a statement debunking PJ Media’s story.

Anton has also denied that McMaster shouted at the Israelis during the meeting. I should add, though, that doing so would hardly constitute a major offense. Exchanges can become heated, even among friends.

Israel now has denied the substance of the PJ Media report. Here is what Itai Bardov, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Washington, told Jeff Dunetz:

The allegations in the article relating to Israel are totally false.

Israel never asked for Mustafa Ali to not attend a meeting on Hezbollah, Syria or any other matter.

Israel is not aware of any Trump administration official that does not consider Hezbollah a terror organization, and General McMaster never yelled at Israeli officials.

Israel appreciates General McMaster’s efforts to strengthen the US-Israel relationship and looks forward to continuing to work closely with the Trump administration to counter the threats posed by Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah.

In addition, the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo has reviewed a copy of the official list of U.S. and Israeli officials participating in the meeting at issue. According to Kredo, the list confirms that Ali was never scheduled to attend. And Dunetz has posted a “team picture” of those who participated in the August 17 meeting. He says Ali is not in the picture.

I have no personal knowledge of who was at the meeting, what transpired, or what McMaster believes about Hezbollah. However, the evidence that Ali wasn’t at the meeting seems quite strong. And, though I’m not a fan of McMaster, I continue very much to doubt that he is soft in any respect on Hezbollah.

Categories: "Fake news", McMaster and Hezbollah, McMaster and Israel
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Israeli Team Refused to Brief Trump Officials As Long as McMaster Appointee Ali Was in the Room

September 14, 2017

Israeli Team Refused to Brief Trump Officials As Long as McMaster Appointee Ali Was in the Room via YouTube, September 13, 2017

(Please see also, EXCLUSIVE: Gen. McMaster Sparked a Row With the Israeli Delegation at a White House Meeting on Hezbollah. — DM)

Categories: McMaster and Hezbollah, McMaster and Israel, McMaster on Islamic terrorism, Trump administration, Trump administration and Israel, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel
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EXCLUSIVE: Gen. McMaster Sparked a Row With the Israeli Delegation at a White House Meeting on Hezbollah

September 13, 2017

EXCLUSIVE: Gen. McMaster Sparked a Row With the Israeli Delegation at a White House Meeting on Hezbollah, PJ Media, David Steinberg, September 12, 2017

H.R. McMaster (Rex Features via AP Images)

Friction between General McMaster and the Israeli delegation did not end with Israel’s demand that Ali leave the room.

Sources reported that McMaster went on to explicitly dismiss the Israelis’ specific concerns about Hezbollah.

In particular, the Israelis expressed concern that the “safe zone” currently being established within Syria — an idea that had been vociferously supported by Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran — would immediately become a safe zone for Hezbollah to operate.

McMaster was said to “blow off” this major Israeli concern, and to be “yelling at the Israelis” during the meeting

None of the several sources were aware if Trump had been made aware of the incident.

As has been widely reported, Trump’s Chief of Staff General Kelly has instituted tight restrictions on information and contacts reaching the president. Additionally, Kelly has been said to be working closely with General McMaster on issues related to the flow of information within the administration.

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During the week of August 27, an Israeli delegation met with members of the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House to discuss the current threat to Israel by the terror group Hezbollah.

Israel believes this threat is currently dire. This meeting preceded a two-week long Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) exercise to rehearse for possible war with Hezbollah. The Jerusalem Post described this exercise, which commenced on September 4 and is ongoing, as the IDF’s largest in 20 years.

Hezbollah has been a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997. However, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly brought NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism Mustafa Javed Ali to the White House meeting with Israel. Ali, a McMaster appointee, is described by a senior administration source as being “opposed to Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization.”

What then transpired at the meeting has been confirmed to PJ Media by several administration sources, by members of non-governmental organizations involved in national security, and by a source within the Israeli government.

The Israeli delegation demanded that Mustafa Javed Ali leave the room.

This demand was made despite the clear likelihood that Ali would later be privy to the meeting’s materials and discussion. As such, sources speculated that Israel intended the demand to serve as a message to President Trump that McMaster’s behavior has constituted a subversion of Trump’s stated Middle East policy.

Mustafa Javed Ali, second from right, attending West Point’s 2015 Senior Conference. The conference was described as having focused on “unconventional approaches to counterterrorism.”

None of the several sources were aware if Trump had been made aware of the incident.

As has been widely reported, Trump’s Chief of Staff General Kelly has instituted tight restrictions on information and contacts reaching the president. Additionally, Kelly has been said to be working closely with General McMaster on issues related to the flow of information within the administration.

Friction between General McMaster and the Israeli delegation did not end with Israel’s demand that Ali leave the room.

Sources reported that McMaster went on to explicitly dismiss the Israelis’ specific concerns about Hezbollah.

In particular, the Israelis expressed concern that the “safe zone” currently being established within Syria — an idea that had been vociferously supported by Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran — would immediately become a safe zone for Hezbollah to operate.

McMaster was said to “blow off” this major Israeli concern, and to be “yelling at the Israelis” during the meeting.

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For months, General McMaster has been under fire regarding his personnel decisions from Trump voters and the large majority of Americans who support Israel. McMaster has fired or otherwise removed all NSC appointees who strongly supported President Trump’s Middle East campaign platform.

Trump had repeatedly promised that his administration would reject the Bush/Obama policy of denying the doctrinal Islamic roots of terror, most notably expressed by Trump’s willingness to declare jihadist attacks to be “radical Islamic terrorism.” Indeed, Trump honored this pledge early in his term via the many appointees to the NSC brought on by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and others.

Under McMaster, however, all of these voices have been removed from the NSC in what has been described as a “purge.”

In their stead, McMaster has astonishingly welcomed figures such as Kris Baumanand Robert Malley to his NSC. Bauman’s and Malley’s careers have been so objectively subversive to the Trump agenda on Israel that McMaster might as well have appointed Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter.

Mustafa Javed Ali in attendance at former President Obama’s 2010 White House Iftar Dinner. Ali worked within the FBI at the time. Per a source: “No Muslim reformers or liberals were welcome at those events.” (List of expected attendees available at link.)

Little information has previously been public about McMaster appointee Mustafa Javed Ali. Regarding Israel’s demand that he leave the meeting, a source claimed:

Israel possibly knows more about Javed Ali than [the Trump administration] does.

Earlier this year, Ali was rumored to have caused the cancellation of a scheduled talk to the NSC by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on account of her “Islamophobia.” Mrs. Ali, who escaped to the Netherlands from Kenya after fleeing a forced marriage, violence, and being a victim of female genital mutilation, is now an activist exposing Islamic doctrine. She has lived under 24/7 protection since 2004, when a Muslim murdered Dutch film director Theo van Gogh for making a film with Mrs. Ali that criticized Islam. A five-page note threatening the same fate for Ali was left pinned to van Gogh’s chest with a knife.

Sources within the Trump administration have confirmed to PJMedia that this rumor about Mustafa Javed Ali was correct: Mrs. Ali had been invited to speak to the NSC. She was later disinvited due to Javed Ali’s interference.

On August 11, Mrs. Ali published a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Trump for “losing focus” on his terrorism campaign pledges. Within the op-ed, she chose to mention only the “most charitable” criticism being floated about General McMaster:

Some administration critics have blamed the loss of focus on Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who became White House national security adviser in February. The most charitable formulation of this criticism is that military men who slogged their way through wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have an aversion to the argument that we face an ideological opponent, as opposed to a series of military problems.

But I put the responsibility on Mr. Trump. With regard to radical Islam, he simply seems to have lost interest.

Yet senior administration sources are far less charitable about McMaster and his appointee Mustafa Javed Ali. As mentioned above, they described Ali as taking the breathtaking position that Hezbollah should not be a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. They described Ali as holding the same view regarding the Muslim Brotherhood.

They claimed Ali’s work within the NSC essentially amounts to him attempting to prevent the Trump administration from using any of the means at its disposal to target Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as organizations. They claimed Ali advocates only targeting such groups’ identifiably “violent” members, and ignoring all other elements of their activities that may be subversive of U.S. interests.

These are recognizable as Obama-era policies — the “smart set” foreign policy strategies behind the Obama administration’s disastrous “Countering Violent Extremism” programs. This is the thinking that marched the Middle East to bloody catastrophe: a half-million dead in Syria.

Yet General McMaster appointed Ali as NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism, and purged the NSC of voices supporting President Trump’s Mideast agenda. Then McMaster reportedly sat Ali in front of an Israeli delegation visiting the White House to share its concerns about Hezbollah.

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I have previously reported here at PJMedia of an extensive public relations push — coordinated by administration supporters of General McMaster — to encourage conservative outlets and think-tanks to reject claims that McMaster is antagonistic to Trump’s foreign policy and to the State of Israel in general. That push was remarkably successful: an online search for critical McMaster stories from the right will reveal such articles virtually halted in mid-August.

The broader questions of President Trump’s continued silence are more difficult to read. None of the sources contacted for this article believe the president has fundamentally shifted his thinking.

Trump likely understands he would not have defeated Hillary Clinton without stating “radical Islamic terrorism.” Yet sources could offer only speculation as to how Trump intends to win his Middle East agenda while saddled with a National Security Council subversive to those goals.

Categories: McMaster and Hezbollah, McMaster and Israel, Trump administration, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel
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An Ideological Coup against Trump?

August 30, 2017

An Ideological Coup against Trump? American Thinker, Shoula Romano Horing, August 30, 2017

(If President Trump won’t defend himself and his policies from the ideological coup waged by his appointees, who will? Who can? — DM)

As replacements for those fired, McMaster appointed individuals who are friendly with Obama-era ideologues who blame Israel for Palestinian terror, encourage negotiations with Hamas and are obsessed with the plan for Palestinian statehood. 

In addition, just before Trump’s visit to Israel, McMaster erroneously publicly claimed  that the President would recognize “Palestinian Self-determination“ and refused to state that the Western Wall,  one the holiest Jewish sites,  and the last remnant of the walls around the Second Jewish Temple, is in Israel and insisted that Netanyahu could not accompany Trump to the site after failing to convince the President not to visit there.

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See also: Bolton and Gorka both say they are locked out of the White House

As an Israeli who supports Trump and attended Trump’s inauguration to celebrate his win, I read with a heavy heart the reports leaking out of the White House that Sebastian Gorka did not resign but was forced out of his position as a security advisor to the President by General H.R. McMaster and General John Kelly.

Mr. Gorka is the seventh Trump loyalist McMaster has forced out in recent months from the President’s National Security Team.  All have been attempting to carry out President Trump’s campaign promises to combat Iranian and radical Islamist terrorist threats, and to support Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Gorka was the third Trump loyalist forced out since General John F. Kelly, an old military colleague of McMaster, was appointed to be the chief of staff and reportedly encouraged McMaster to make any staffing changes he deems necessary.

If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it is a duck.  Maybe it does not sound yet like a “purge” and an ideological coup, but it is starting to look like one, engineered by Generals McMaster and Kelly. It is designed to eliminate President Trump’s national security agenda of support to Israel, opposition to the Iran deal, and determination to name and combat radical Islamist terrorism.

On Friday, in a letter reported by the Federalist, Sebastian Gorka’s explained his “resignation” by expressing his unhappiness with the direction that the Trump administration’s foreign policy has taken as signaled by the President’s recent speech on Afghanistan. Gorka stated:

“Regrettably, outside of yourself (President Trump), the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan…. The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a critical element of your presidential campaign has been lost.”

On Sunday, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Gorka offered harsh criticism of McMaster’s stance towards Islamists saying:

“McMaster sees the threat of Islam through an Obama administration lens, meaning that religion has nothing to do with the war we are in.… He believes and he told me in his office that these people are just criminals.”

A source close to the White House said that after Bannon was forced out, anti-Bannon factions began erecting bureaucratic roadblocks to undermine Gorka internally.

Yahoo News reported that Kelly revoked Gorka’s security clearance, making it difficult if not impossible for him to continue his job. Other news outlets reported that Kelly has been restricting access to Trump as McMaster’s detractors are trying to reach the president.

In his short term at the National Security Council (NSC), General McMaster has fired or forced out from the National Security Team, including the NSC, strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran officials such as Steve Bannon, K.T. McFarland, Adam Lovinger, Rich Higgins, Derek Harvey, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, and now Sebastian Gorka.

General McMaster quickly removed Bannon, the engineer of much of President Trump’s pro-Israel, anti-Islamist terrorism agenda, from the Principals Committee of the NSC. McMaster also removed K.T. McFarland, a veteran pro-Israel national security professional in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations and a key member of the team of Iran deal opponents originally gathered by Trump. Lovinger, a pro-Israel national security strategist from the Pentagon, was returned to the Pentagon with his security clearance revoked.

McMaster also fired Iran “hawk” Rich Higgins, the NSC’s director of strategic planning, after Higgins wrote a memo about personnel opposed to President Trump’s foreign policy agenda in the NSC.  McMaster also fired Derek Harvey, a senior director and expert on the Middle East and one of the best intelligence analysts on Iraq, after Harvey prepared a list of NSC Obama-era holdovers to be fired for leaking national security information to the press.  Instead, other conservatives were fired, such as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a strong opponent of the Iran deal, who tried to intensify efforts to counter Iran in the Middle East and controlled officials opposed to the president’s policies.

As replacements for those fired, McMaster appointed individuals who are friendly with Obama-era ideologues who blame Israel for Palestinian terror, encourage negotiations with Hamas and are obsessed with the plan for Palestinian statehood.

As David Steinberg from PJ Media wrote, “Indeed, one is hard-pressed to identify a member of the NSC brought in by McMaster with a history of aligning with President Trump on Iran or with his Mideast policy or by his willingness to treat Islamic doctrine as the root cause of terror and related Mideast strife.”

But such nominations are not surprising if one understands McMaster’s own beliefs. He advised the president to certify that Iran is in compliance with the Iran deal, saying that Iran is merely violating the Iran deal’s “spirit” despite German intelligence reports that Iran is cheating and Trump’s promise to tear up or strictly enforce the Iran deal and punish violations.  Iran has refused to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into the Parchin nuclear facility or to interview Iran’s nuclear scientists, and has repeatedly tested intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Following the Obama administration’s practices, McMaster opposes using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” saying that the term isn’t helpful for U.S. goals because it does not help the U.S. in working with allies to defeat terrorist groups.“

Moreover, the general said that Jihadists terrorists aren’t true to their religion and terrorist organizations like ISIS represent a perversion of Islam and are thus un-Islamic

In addition, just before Trump’s visit to Israel, McMaster erroneously publicly claimed  that the President would recognize “Palestinian Self-determination“ and refused to state that the Western Wall,  one the holiest Jewish sites,  and the last remnant of the walls around the Second Jewish Temple, is in Israel and insisted that Netanyahu could not accompany Trump to the site after failing to convince the President not to visit there.

President Trump must wake up and realize the damage that Generals Kelly and McMaster are inflicting on his policies and on those who have been loyal to his ideology. President Trump should know that Israeli history is littered with heroic generals on the battlefield who were weak appeasers in national security when they became prime ministers, such as Israeli chiefs of staff Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak.  He should realize that just because they are generals they are not necessarily the right advisors to implement Trump’s tough-minded agenda.

Shoula Romano Horing is an Israeli born and raised attorney. Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com      

 

Categories: Ideological coup, John Kelly, McMaster, McMaster and "Palestine", McMaster and Israel, Trump administration, Trump agenda, Trump and Bannon, Trump and Gorka, Trump and Iran, Trump and Islamic terrorism, Trump and Israel, Trump and Palestinians, Trump Hater's Club, Trump on the defensive, Trump supporters, Trump under seige, Trump's generals
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H.R. McMaster foes slammed as ‘Islamophobes,’ ‘white supremacists’

August 13, 2017

H.R. McMaster foes slammed as ‘Islamophobes,’ ‘white supremacists’, Washington Times, Cheryl K. Chumley, August 11, 2017

(Once again, McMaster has to go. Not just soon; now.– DM)

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after a security briefing at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

When CAIR labels someone an Islamophobe, or outs an organization as fueling Islamophobia, one has to wonder: Is this really Islamaphobia? Or is this rather the pro-Muslim-at-all-costs CAIR trying to silence any and all critics and criticisms of Islam?

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H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s choice of national security adviser, has what some say is a shady record of defense of Israel — and what others outright label as subversive to America’s interests.

Now, the Council on American Islamic Relations has jumped to McMaster’s defense. And that alone is a red flag.

CAIR isn’t exactly down the middle on Palestinian-Israel affairs — or kind to those who dare to criticize Islam and point to the religion’s oh-so-frequent tie-in with acts of terror and terrorists.

But worse, CAIR couldn’t just defend McMaster on his record. The group had to outright name-call and blast those who see McMaster as a poor national security adviser choice — and as everybody knows, the left’s most pulled weapon, when logic fails, is the verbal attack.

This is what CAIRtweeted: “#CAIR Islamophobia Watch: Islamophobes, white supremacists launch campaign to oust H.R. McMaster after he fired …” And the sentence is completed in a link to the article CAIR included: “… a number of their allies from the National Security Council.”

Suddenly, a story that’s stayed largely beneath the surface of a media world — one that’s been occupied by Russia collusion investigations, North Korea aggressions and Trump rhetoric — is front and center. The reason?

When CAIR labels someone an Islamophobe, or outs an organization as fueling Islamophobia, one has to wonder: Is this really Islamaphobia? Or is this rather the pro-Muslim-at-all-costs CAIR trying to silence any and all critics and criticisms of Islam?

The Center for Security Policy just this week called for the firing of McMaster for “disloyal and subversive behavior,” accusing the adviser of undermining Trump on “virtually every important and foreign and defense policy issue.”

A few days before that, a columnist with the Jerusalem Post wrote of her worry with McMaster’s penchant for “constantly refer[ring] to Israel as the occupying power and insist[ing] falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.”

And in between, the Zionist Organization of America — one of the few Jewish groups to stand strong in the pro-Trump camp — claimed McMaster was undermining the White House on Middle East policy, particularly relations between the United States and Israel. ZOA also accuses McMaster of intentionally firing pro-Israeli voices on the National Security Council and replacing them with individuals with more hostile takes on the Jewish nation.

In a report, ZOA called for Trump to “remove General McMaster from his current position and reassign him to another position where he can do no further harm on these critical national security issues.”

Trump, meanwhile, has doubled down on support for McMaster, saying he still has confidence in his adviser. At the same time, there was this, just in from The Week: “Trump is reportedly ‘furious’ that McMasterfired an NSC staffer behind a Trump-under-attack memo.”

That staffer’s name? Rich Higgins, now-fired director of strategic planning and the author of a seven-page memo, “POTUS & Political Warfare,” a reported roadmap of sorts to topple Trump that was being circulated among likeminded members of Trump’s administration.

That was all part and parcel of McMaster’s housecleaning of Mike Flynn holdovers — a determination of friend versus foe and subsequent purge.

But the whispers about McMaster’s anti-Israel bent are growing louder. And now that chatter’s been ratcheted with the entrance of CAIR.

One fact about CAIR: In 2009, a federal judge ruled the government had “ample evidence” linking CAIR to Hamas.

The fact this group has now risen to defend McMaster and slam his critics as white supremacists and Islamophobes is only further fuel — for the fiery calls for Trump to oust him.

Categories: CAIR, Islamophobia, McMaster and "Palestine", McMaster and Israel, National Security Council, Trump administration, Trump agenda, White supremacy, Zionist Organization of America
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NSC Purge: McMaster ‘Deeply Hostile to Israel and to Trump’

August 3, 2017

NSC Purge: McMaster ‘Deeply Hostile to Israel and to Trump’, Breitbart, August 3, 2017

(According to President Trump’s agenda for today, he will meet with McMaster following his daily intelligence briefing. — DM)

Andrew Harnik / Associated Press

Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick wrote Wednesday evening that National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is purging pro-Israel staff from the National Security Council (NSC), turning the administration against President Donald Trump’s policies.

In a Facebook post, Glick noted that “all of these people” whom McMaster has fired this week — Rich Higgins, Derek Harvey, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick — “are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds.”

She noted that the firings were the latest evidence that NSA McMaster is “deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump”:

According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.

Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump’s visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall.

What hasn’t been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn’t. It was McMaster.

And even that, it works out wasn’t sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial — ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.

Glick noted that the three latest firings were not McMaster’s first attack on pro-Israel officials, or those critical of radical Islam. Two others had already been assigned to other jobs outside the National Security Council, she said.

Meanwhile, she noted, McMaster has replaced pro-Israel officials with anti-Israel, anti-Trump officials, and he allowed anti-Israel Obama holdovers to continue in their jobs:

[McMaster] fires all of Trump’s loyalists and replaces them with Trump’s opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes’ and Valerie Jarrett’s people in place.

(Malley was notoriously fired by Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign for meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and advocating negotiations with them. He was later brought into President Obama’s administration to negotiate with Iran, and advised Obama — evidently poorly — on how to fight the Islamic State.)

Glick noted that “McMaster disagrees and actively undermines Trump’s agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda,” including the Iran deal: “As for Iran, well, suffice it to say that McMaster supports the deal and refuses to publish the side deals Obama signed with the Iranians and then hid from the public.”

She also noted the irony that Trump had only hired McMaster, under pressure, because he was recommended by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

Finally, there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.

And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.

Senator John McCain. That’s right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.

Glick expressed disbelief that Trump could fire former General Michael Flynn as NSA “essentially for nothing,” while allowing McMaster to attack Israel, and undermining the rest of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, with impunity.

She suggested that Trump replace McMaster — or else Israel might begin to reconsider its embrace of Trump:

If McMaster isn’t fired after all that he has done and all that he will do, we’re all going to have to reconsider Trump’s foreign policy. Because if after everything he has done, and everything that he will certainly do to undermine Trump’s stated foreign policy agenda, it will no longer be possible to believe that exiting the nuclear deal or supporting the US alliance with Israel and standing with US allies against US foes — not to mention draining Washington’s cesspool – are Trump’s policies. How can they be when Trump stands with a man who opposes all of them and proves his opposition by among other things, firing Trump’s advisers who share Trump’s agenda?

She said that Trump should not fear criticism for firing another adviser:

One source claims that Trump’s political advisers are afraid of how it will look if he fires another national security adviser. But that makes no sense. Trump is being attacked for everything and nothing. Who cares if he gets attacked for doing something that will actually help him to succeed in office? Why should fear of media criticism play a role here or anywhere for this president and this administration?

Glick added, wryly: “Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?”

Read Glick’s full post here.

Categories: McMaster, McMaster and Israel, Trump administration, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel
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