12/31/16

Louie Gohmert Joins With Ted Cruz: Defund the UN… Slams Obama for Anti-Israel UN Attack

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

God bless Louie Gohmert. The conservative Texan Congressman is not only a principled man… he has a spine made of titanium. Gohmert is never afraid to speak his mind and did so on the Sean Hannity show concerning Barack Obama and John Kerry betraying Israel at the United Nations. This is how it is done… magnificent and well said. Slow clap.

Gohmert is now working on a bill to take away funding from the UN until they rescind their resolution on Israeli settlements and he noted that “they don’t need our help to be anti-Semitic.” He also wants to make it a crime to use any government money to recognize Palestine as an independent country or state. Amen to that… twice. He also bluntly stated that the Obama administration favors “the bullies over the victims. … Look at it, who have they given more money than anybody? Iran.” Exactly right. Obama hearts Islamic terrorist thugs over the Jewish state and America. Muslims of a feather. There, I said it.

From Western Journalism:

Between Friday’s stab-in-the-back betrayal of one of the country’s closest allies and Wednesday’s insult-to-injury speech by Secretary of State John Kerry, President Barack Obama’s foreign policies are careening to the end of his term like a runaway train.

But a conservative Texas congressman wants to put on the brakes.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, the veteran Republican representative from the Lone Star State and an outspoken conservative leader in Congress, told Fox News’ Kimberly Guilfoyle this week he’s joining with conservatives in the Senate by preparing a bill to cripple the United Nations by cutting off U.S. money for it.

After Friday’s passage — with the approval of the Obama administration — of a Security Council resolution that brands Israeli an international criminal for building housing on its own territory, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s attack Israel for allegedly blocking the peace process, Gohmert said it was time to bring both the United Nations and the Obama White House to heel.

The bill he’s preparing, he said, has twin goals.

“One, we don’t give a dime to the U.N. until they rescind that resolution,” Gohmert said. “And people say, ‘oh, they’ll never do that.’ Fine, they don’t need our help to be anti-Semitic.

“The other is … making it a crime to use any government money to recognize Palestine as an independent country or state, because that’s what I keep hearing is going to be the next shoe to drop.”

Louie Gohmert has joined forces with another feisty Texan, Ted Cruz, to go after defunding the UN. Obama is trying to set America on fire on his way out of the White House. Attacking Israel in this fashion and stabbing them in the back is the most shameful act yet, in a long, long line of shameful acts. Cruz excoriated President Obama and his administration for its cowardice and proposed a unique retribution for the UN once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Cruz sharply criticized Obama and stated that we should “reconsider financial support for the nations that supported this resolution” and that it may be time to “significantly reduce or even eliminate US funding of the United Nations.” Agreed. And we should expel Palestinian diplomats as well. I notice that Obama is hot for the Russians, but does not mention the Palestinians, who are terrorists, at all.

“For eight long years, the Obama administration has worked systematically to undermine the nation of Israel,” Cruz wrote. “They actively worked to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu, and illegally used US taxpayer funds to do so. Never has there been a more anti-Israel administration, and today’s United Nations vote is the culmination of their systemic agenda to weaken Israel and strengthen its enemies. Every Obama foreign policy official should be ashamed of today’s UN resolution, and any official who disagrees with or hopes to avoid the anti-Israel legacy of this administration should resign on principle today,” he continued.

More from Cruz: “I also emphatically second the call of my colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham that the consequences of this disgraceful UN resolution should be severe,” Cruz said. “I look forward to working with Sen. Graham, and with the incoming administration of President-elect Trump, to significantly reduce or even eliminate US funding of the United Nations, and also to seriously reconsider financial support for the nations that supported this resolution. For those who have put your name to this despicable attack on Israel, you did so with full knowledge of the consequences of your actions. And for those who acquiesced or facilitated the UN resolution- — especially President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and Ambassador Power- — history will record your abiding and shameful legacy undermining our friend and ally Israel,” Cruz added.

Gohmert and Cruz are right… cut off funding for the UN and anyone who supports their hatred of Israel. Stand by Israel for real and hit these anti-Semitic bastards where it hurts. In their wallet. Since the UN seems to hate Israel and America so much, cut off the $3 billion we give them directly every year and in fact, cut off the $8 billion we give to them and connected organizations annually. That money can be used on our southern border and to bring jobs back to our country. Make America great again… defund the UN.

12/29/16

Obama’s Treachery Exposed

By: Joan Swirsky | Canada Free Press

After watching all the pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration of January 20, 2009, I remember turning to my husband Steve and saying: “The sole mission of Barack Obama and his henchmen is to destroy Israel.”

Steve reminded me that there was a mountain of domestic issues awaiting the new, far-left regime, and I agreed. And sure enough, Mr. Obama and his minions proceeded to wreak havoc on job creation and on the American military, inflict strangulating regulations, amass crushing national debt, foist horrific healthcare and education systems on our citizens, and seed every government department with operatives from the Nazi-inspired terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood, and then hand over control of the Internet to the United Nations—the most corrupt, tin-pot-dictator-driven, anti-American, anti-Semitic, American-resource-draining cesspool in our country.

But all that still left them plenty of time to enact a foreign policy that genuflected to our enemies and spit in the face of our most faithful allies, most particularly Israel.

Writer Mona Charen has said that Mr. Obama has a “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” As if to reinforce that opinion, he just engaged in his longtime habit of spitting on Jews—and also Christians—by launching his poison dart on December 23^rd, right in time for Chanukah and Christmas.

After the first vote proposed by Egypt to condemn Israeli “settlements”—meaning housing on Israeli land—was canceled after President-elect Trump intervened, the vote was rescheduled in the United Nation’s Security Council when New Zealand (10,000 miles from Israel), Malaysia (where the official religion is Islam), Senegal (which is 90-percent Muslim), and Venezuela (so impoverished that people are now scrounging for toilet paper) reinstituted the anti-Israel measure, and the United States, reversing decades of U.S. policy, refused to veto it.

Resolution 2334 demands that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the [so-called] occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It also advised all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”—what former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called “Auschwitz borders.”

Despite White House denials that it had anything to do with creating the Resolution, there is no doubt that this sneak attack was hatched and orchestrated directly from the Oval Office and involved Mr. Obama himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, Susan Rice, and other of his Jew-hating acolytes. Israel says it has “iron-clad evidence” of direct involvement, and leaked documents already confirm that claim.

TEAM OF JEW HATERS

Samantha Power is Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. and it was she who delivered the curare-tipped pronouncement to not veto the vote. Her involvement is rich with irony, wrote Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of The Israel Warrior: Standing Up for the Jewish State from Campus to Street Corner (2016), ”For the duration of the seemingly endless Syrian civil war [Power] has figuratively fiddled while that country burns. Now, with one foot out the door from a tenure that has all but obliterated her once formidable reputation as an anti-genocide activist, she’s decided to kick Israel in the teeth. Earth to Samantha: 500,000 Arabs died in Syria. Do you really think the problem in the Middle East is Jews building extra bedrooms in communities in Beit-El? You couldn’t pass even one United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Russia, Syria, and Iran for the slaughter in Syria. But you passed this motion condemning peace-loving Jews who live in the ancient Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria?”

Power, as far back as 2002, advocated an end all U.S. military aid to Israel and wrote of her willingness to “alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]…” She also advocated, Ed Lasky writes, “that America send armed military forces,” “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention” to” impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.” Nice.

Power joins a long list of Jew haters that Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with. This is the short list and does not count the teeming swamp of anti-Semites like Israel-loathing Islamist professors Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said and others going back to his childhood:

The “court Jews” who sold their souls to the devil in exchange for the seductive allure of access to power. One of many examples is Rahm Emanuel, who curried favor as White House Chief of Staff for his figurative 10-minutes of fame and effectively sold out his Israeli-born father and the land his father heroically fought for in the early years of Israel’s existence.
Robert Malley, longtime security adviser to Mr. Obama and now his new ISIS czar, is a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah, and has often called for an end to all aid to Israel. Wikipedia says he’s the son of Simon Malley, an Egyptian-born Jewish journalist, and Barbara Silverstein, a New Yorker who worked for the U.N. delegation of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Both loathed Israel and apparently passed their toxic DNA onto their son.
Dennis Ross, Mr. Obama’s former special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, which included Iran, participated in 12 years of failed Israeli-Palestinian “peace” efforts. He once suggested a plan that translated today would mean listening to the 22 hostile states that surround Israel and saying “majority rules!”
George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish multibillionaire, has devoted his entire life to far-left causes. Perhaps as a dress rehearsal for bringing down big bad America, he was responsible for breaking the bank of England and also implicated in the Asian financial crisis that broke the bank of Thailand et al. He has also founded and funded numerous groups that work unstintingly to bring about Israel’s destruction. He is known as Obama’s “puppet master,” meaning that his money essentially calls the shots on both America’s domestic and foreign policies. According to Richard Poe’s book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, the Soros cabal is really “a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive.” Read about the vast scope of the radical organizations Soros funds here, and why he is considered the “godfather of the left” here.
Hillary Clinton, says Dick Morris, has had “relationships with terrorists [that] began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation—which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization [when] the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.” As a lackey of and putative heir to Obama’s, ahem, legacy, Hillary’s rancid relationship with Israel is well known.
Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and current National Security Advisor, advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and has inspired dozens of articles with titles like these in CommentaryMagazine.com: “Susan Rice Is Doing Something at the UN: Targeting Israel” and “What Was Susan Rice’s Embarrassing Anti-Israel Tirade Supposed to Accomplish?”
Lee Hamilton, former Indiana congressman, whom Ed Lasky calls the eminence grise of Obama’s Mideast policy and who has suggested that the U.S. should pressure Israel to surrender the Golan Heights and leave the West Bank, said not a word about dismantling Hamas or Hezbollah!
Zbigniew Brzezinski, an Obama advisor and longtime Israel loather, suggested that the Obama administration should tell Israel that the U.S. will attack Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran.
John Brennan, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and current head of the CIA, suggested that Mr. Obama & Co. “reach out” to Hezbollah. He has also said that jihadists and Islamists are not enemies of America because ”jihad is a holy struggle…”
Valerie Jarrett, Iranian-born Muslim and Senior Advisor to Obama, is described in a riveting article by Karin McQuillan in American Thinker as the power behind both Obamas. McQuillan also elaborates on Barack Obama’s envy problem, which is central, I believe, to his Jewish problem. More on this below.
And of course John Kerry, who on Wednesday, speaking directly for his boss, spent over an hour on TV engaging in egregious historical revisionism and fairytale bromides to essentially inflict a two-state solution on Israel, with partners who to this day do not—and have sworn they never will—accept a Jewish state in their midst. My favorite line was Mr. Kerry saying that Israel could be Jewish or democratic, but not both. Duh.

EYES AND EARS…THE OLD RELIABLE STANDBYS

Why was I was confident that Obama’s burning mission—his obsession—was to destroy Israel?

The first reason is that I trust what I see and hear.

Who can forget Mr. Obama’s claim that in the 20 years he sat in the pews of “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright’s “church,” he heard not one of the uncountable instances of virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic rants. But unless he was clinically deaf, of course he both heard and tacitly agreed with Wright—especially when it came to the Jews.

Impossible to forget the interview with George Stephanopoulos when Mr. Obama referred to “my Muslim faith”—which he did not correct but his host rushed to correct. I’m Jewish and I can promise you of the 14 million Jews in the world, not one would ever refer to “my Buddhist faith,” just as not one of the 1.3-billion Christians in the world would ever refer to “my Zoroastrian faith.” Plain and simple, it appeared that Mr. Obama experienced what old Sigmund would call a Freudian slip, i.e., when you accidently blurt out the truth.

In addition to his psychological inability to utter the words “Islamic terrorism,” Mr. Obama has consistently lectured us about Islam’s immense contribution to America (my history teachers strangely omitted this revelation). We know he was raised in his formative years in Indonesia, attended a Muslim madrassa, and even recalled as an adult that “the sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer.” Of course, he also said that, “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation” and, speaking at the U.N., “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.” That may play well in Indonesia, but it’s completely alien to those of us who believe in free speech.

Two other indelible events were when the Prime Minister of Israel came to the White House in 2010 and was left waiting for over an hour when Mr. Obama abruptly ended their meeting to eat dinner, sending the PM out the side door, and when he intrusively meddled in an Israeli election (while pontificating that there should be no meddling in the election that just repudiated his entire tenure in office). Just as indelible was the sight of Mr. Obama literally bowing deeply at the waist to the theocratic leader of Saudi Arabia and despots just like him.

We have good evidence that the Saudis paid for Mr. Obama’s education at Harvard Law School. And that the Saudis, until the Iran deal went through, were sworn enemies of Israel. Could Mr. Obama have orchestrated U.N. Resolution 2334 to please his moneybags benefactors?

But most compelling is what the book Mr. Obama studied, the Koran, says about Jews, none of it good. For instance: “Oh Muslim…there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”

This is a man who may call himself a Christian—in spite of the fact that when he spoke at Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit school—he had the school cover up the name of Jesus Christ with black cloths—but it is clear that his heart and soul and politics lie squarely in the Muslim world—the world that loathes both Jews and Israel.

As I said, eyes and ears.

BEHAVIOR

The second reason for my conviction that Mr. Obama’s mission was to destroy Israel derived from two powerful lessons I learned from being a psychotherapist for over two decades. The first, simply stated, is that you are what you do. Not how you describe yourself or your lofty plans, but what you actually do in this life. Your behavior.

Everything I’ve observed about Mr. Obama’s behavior—what he does—from the anti-Israel, Jew-hating people he associated with in his past, to the anti-Israel, Jew-hating people he’s chosen for high positions in his administration, to the pastor whose pews he sat in for 20 years (with ears wide opened), to his indefensibly rude and contemptuous behavior toward the Prime Minister of Israel, to his anti-Israel benefactors—not only the Saudis but George Soros—to his latest treachery at the U.N., strengthens my conviction.

Finally, what I learned is that the strongest human emotion is not hatred, not anger, and not vengeance, but jealousy! When you peel back the layers of emotion—whether it’s in the commission of a crime like theft or even murder or hatred of Jews and Israel—jealousy is almost always the animating force.

Mr. Obama and his minions see the pathetic lack of creativity, of innovation, of an elevated standard-of-living, and of progress in the community of Arabs as maddening.

First, they were humiliated when at the founding of Israel in 1948 , powerful Arab armies attacked the fledgling state and were annihilated by the bedraggled survivors of the Holocaust,

Second, the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat decided in the late 1960s to name the disgruntled Arabs “Palestinians,” effectively relegating them to perpetual victim status and allowing the world to watch them accomplish little more than sending their children on suicide-bombing missions and then naming a street after them and collecting a stipend for their “sacrifice.”

Third, to this day they remain pathetically dependent on another ineffectual U.N. agency—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA], which has exploited them in the same way that Democrat politics have kept African-Americans in abject poverty for over 60 years, with high crime rates and inferior education, while promising them the moon.

When Mr. Obama & Co. contrast this embarrassing history with the jaw-dropping evolution of the Jewish state—its trailblazing technology and medical innovations, its symphonies, sports teams, booming economy and military might—it’s infuriating to them. They get angry, crazed with anger, murderous with anger.

But under the fury is jealousy. They can’t help it. What you see is the anger because anger feels good and jealousy feels bad. It’s that simple.

MR. OBAMA’S IMPOTENCE

In the case of the latest punishing U.N. resolution, however, it is pure conceit on the part of Mr. Obama & Co. to imagine that it will make any difference at all.

First and foremost, the powerful State of Israel does not take its marching orders from anyone except its democratically-elected officials, certainly not from a body like the U.N. that has seen fit to condemn Israel dozens of times while true monster states only once or not at all. In less than a month, Israel will have a true friend in the White House with President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Pence, and virtually all of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and staff choices.

Personally, if I could offer Mr. Trump one suggestion, it would be to throw the entire, utterly useless, money-wasting United Nations out of the United States! This is exactly what Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer suggested the other night, to send this feckless excuse for an organization to Zimbabwe, and as for the “good real estate in downtown New York City…Trump ought to find a way to put his name on it and turn it into condos.”

Vic Rosenthal, aka Abu Yehuda, describes yet more impotence. Is the resolution binding? No. Does it make settlements illegal? No. It is a Chapter VI resolution, defined as a “recommendation.” Does it make settlements illegal? No. It just asserts that they are, but the legal case is weak. Does it mean that Israel is “occupying Palestinian territory? No…that is just the U.N.‘s opinion. In fact, there is no such state or territory or entity called “Palestine” and declarations by the U.N. can’t make it so.

How bad is this for Israel? It has no significance in international law, it will not cause Israel to withdraw from the territories, and it might even spur Israel to build more in the territories and Jerusalem or even extend Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria. [Read the entire riveting article to see that every attempt by Mr. Obama to “put it” to Israel is the very definition of impotence].

WHAT NOW?

Writer and editor Ruth S. King says that her “proposal for a daring act by Israel [is to] leave the United Nations. Pack up, close the Permanent Mission to the United Nations and find real jobs for all the bureaucrats, pseudo diplomats and ancillary staff.”

Writer Victor Sharpe asks: Is there any light in this bleak picture? He cites Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center: “Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.”

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters sums up Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.”

It is fitting to end with the prescient words of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens), the great American writer who penned the following words in 1899 in Harper’s Magazine:

“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

12/29/16

A Saga of Bitterness and Hope

Arlene from Israel

Regrettably, I encountered a transmission problem of significant proportions when I sent out my last email posting, “Anger, and Not Panic,” written in response to the Security Council Resolution 2334 which passed because of Obama’s decision to abstain. It was a brief piece, providing reassurance as to the limits of the damage from this perfidy. But somewhere between one-third and one-half of my readers never received it.

The problem is not solved, although I hope it will be by some time next week. Know that I am doing my best and mighty frustrated.

~~~~~~~~~~

I will not resend that email because I want to move on. It can be found on this site.

But I do highly recommend an analysis that has just come out from Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center and the head of the Global Law Forum. I think you will find this article highly informative and considerably reassuring.

http://jcpa.org/dangers-un-security-council-resolution-2334-2016/

Credit: JCPA

~~~~~~~~~~

The bitterness? It’s palpable. There’s a sense of betrayal, of being knifed from multiple directions.

That is because of Obama’s stance, which is a reversal of US policy and former commitments. In his 2011 address to the UN he said repeatedly that a genuine peace can be achieved only via direct negotiations between Israel and the PA. “Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations,” he declared. This rather confirms that his motivation for his current stance is not “peace” at all, but sticking it to Israel. Not that this comes as a surprise.

And because no other nation on the Council stood with Israel (I’ll come back to this).

And because the resolution itself is so shockingly one-sided – lacking perspective and anything resembling justice, relying instead on a gross distortion of historical reality:

[] It refers to all Israeli presence beyond the Green Line as “a flagrant violation of international law.” This means the Kotel and Har HaBayit and much, much more, including the Mount of Olives, where Jews have been buried for 3,000 years.

[] It refers to all territory beyond the Green Line as “occupied Palestinian territory” and demands that Israel cease “all settlement activity” – which is Israel’s “legal obligation.”

~~~~~~~~~~

These are facts that refute the position of this resolution:

[] The British Mandate for Palestine of 1922, passed unanimously by the League of Nations, was an article of international law. It recognized the Jewish historical connection to the land, and conferred upon Britain responsibility for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Britain was to “encourage…close settlement by Jews on the land.” (This was in ALL of Palestine.)

[] The partition plan of 1947, which proposed dividing Palestine into two states carried no weight legally because it was merely a recommendation by the UN General Assembly. In any event, the Arabs rejected it. The Mandate stood.

[] Israel declared independence on a portion of Palestine in 1948. The remainder remained unclaimed Mandate land. There is a principle in customary international law that when a new state is founded, its borders follow the borders of the administrative entity that existed prior.

[] As soon as (actually, even before) independence was declared, the Arab states declared war.

When the War of Independence was over in 1949, armistice lines were drawn. THIS was the Green Line. To Israel’s east, the armistice line was between Israel and Jordan. There was no mention of “Palestinians.” The armistice agreement signed between Israel and Jordan stated specifically that the armistice line (i.e. the Green Line) was only a temporary line that would not prejudice a permanent border, to be determined via negotiations. At that point, Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem illegally – it acquired the area in an offensive war and its occupation of the area was recognized by only two states in the world.

[] During the Six Day War of 1967, Jordan broke its armistice with Israel by joining in attack. By the end of the war, Israel had liberated Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem. This was Mandate land. What is more, Israel’s right to it was strengthened by the fact that it was secured in an defensive war.

[] Within months, the Security Council had passed Resolution 242. It did NOT call for Israel to return to the Green Line. It recognized that this line did not constitute a secure border for Israel, something to which all nations are entitled. It said that the final border would be determined via negotiations. Again: the negotiations were to be with Jordan; there was no mention of “Palestinians.”

[] In 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty. The border determined by this treaty followed the border of the Mandate. In the area of Judea and Samaria, this is the Jordan River.

[] In 1995, the Interim Accord of Oslo was signed (and was witnessed by US President Bill Clinton). It divided Judea and Samaria into three administrative areas. Area C is under full Israeli civil and military control. There is NOTHING in Oslo that prohibits Israel from building in C.

Under Oslo – which actually does not speak specifically of a Palestinian “state” – a final status resolution was to be determined by negotiations between Israel and the PA.

As Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs notes, The Palestinians themselves agreed in the 1995 Interim Agreement that the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be addressed as an item for negotiation between the parties.

http://jcpa.org/israeli-settlements-become-legally-contentious-issue-un/

~~~~~~~~~~

Please note that in none of the above is there a legal prohibition on Israeli building in Judea and Samaria, or now, at a minimum, in Area C.

There is absolutely no indication in “international law” that Israel belongs only behind the 1947 armistice line. Be aware that the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters invoke “international law” as it suits them.

There is no international law that prohibits an Israeli presence in any part of Judea and Samaria, that is, that determines that it is all “occupied Palestinian land.”

The Palestinian Arabs have done a superb job of promoting falsehoods that are now adopted by a bulk of the world’s nations, without regard for justice or historical reality.

~~~~~~~~~~

A quick word about Israel’s alleged “occupation” of Judea and Samaria. First, a nation cannot “occupy” its own land, and this is Israeli land according to the international law of the Mandate.

Occupation occurs only when the army of one sovereign state moves into the territory of another sovereign state. But Judea and Samaria was not the territory of any other sovereign state: Jordan was there illegally.

The Geneva Convention does not apply to this situation, although is sometimes claimed.

~~~~~~~~~~

I spoke above about Obama’s reversal of US policy, and his decision to abstain. But, as has now been revealed, he actually helped to craft the resolution and pushed it vigorously behind the scenes.

Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer has told CNN that there is solid evidence of Obama’s orchestration of the resolution.

“We will present this evidence to the new administration through the appropriate channels. If they want to share it with the American people they are welcome to do it.” As Dermer put it, Obama was behind the “ganging up” on Israel at the Security Council.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/222310

According to Netanyahu spokesman David Keyes, the solid information comes from Arab countries and others in the international community.

~~~~~~~~~~

On Sunday night, Netanyahu went to the Kotel to light the second Chanukah candle. Standing there, he declared:

“I ask those same countries that wish us a Happy Chanukah how they could vote for a U.N. resolution which says that this place, in which we are now celebrating Chanukah, is occupied territory.

“The Western Wall is not occupied. The Jewish Quarter is not occupied.” (Emphasis added)

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/western-wall-not-occupied-netanyahu-says-un-resolution-we-were-here

Credit: prime minister’s office

Our prime minister is very very angry, and with excellent reason. Yesterday, he declared that Israel will not “turn the other cheek.”

~~~~~~~~~~

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro was called in for a 45 minute dressing down by Prime Minister Netanyahu. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that meeting. Other ambassadors were also called in, but Netanyahu met only with Shapiro, because of the expectations of US friendship that had been so severely dashed.

Credit: matzav

~~~~~~~~~~

As to the other nations on the Security Council: five permanent members, China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly: Angola, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay, and Venezuela…

The four that sponsored the resolution after Egypt withdrew were Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela. Israel does not have diplomatic ties with Venezuela or Malaysia. The ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal were recalled for consultations.

The situation with Senegal was particularly disappointing. Israel has been providing agricultural technology to small farmers, and through Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation 4,000 farms were being supported.

Netanyahu has now ordered a cut-off of all assistance to Senegal, as well as the cancellation of the upcoming visit of the Senegalese foreign minister. The message: you cannot accept Israel’s outstretched hand, gladly taking the assistance offered, and then actively promote a resolution that is destructive to Israel.

Similarly, has assistance to Angola been terminated.

~~~~~~~~~~

As to the other nations, some were a lost cause, of course. But in other instances, a different response might have been expected.

Theresa May, new prime minister of the UK, speaks in very pro-Israel terms, at least part of the time. The UK, as a permanent member of the Council, could have cast the necessary veto, but voted for the resolution. Netanyahu has now cancelled a planned meeting with May at the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum. May declares herself “disappointed.”

And the Ukraine, which is traditionally considered a friend of Israel, voted for the resolution anyway. Netanyahu has now cancelled the visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who was due here next week. Ukrainians at first were miffed about this cancellation, and expressed surprise at Netanyahu’s anger. “The text of the resolution is balanced,” said the Ukrainian foreign ministry, which subsequently spoke about expectation that warm ties would endure.

(It is being charged, by the way, that V.P. Biden placed a call to the Ukraine that “encouraged” support on the resolution.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Netanyahu has been criticized in some quarters for what is seen as an over-reaction. I see it otherwise. Time to hold our heads up in an attitude of self-respect: Don’t claim friendship with us and knife us in the back when it suits. Some of Netanyahu’s positions will undoubtedly mellow over time, but it’s not bad to deliver a new message now.

Look at this: Ukrainian MP Alexander Feldman, who is Jewish, has announced on his Facebook page that he intends to submit a bill for moving the Ukrainian embassy to Jerusalem. He hopes this will bring the Ukrainian-Israeli relationship to a whole new level.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/222380

Doesn’t mean this proposal will succeed – it flies directly in the face of the resolution. But would Feldman even have suggested this if not for Netanyahu’s anger?

~~~~~~~~~~

Netanyahu is also evaluating Israel’s relationship with the UN.

~~~~~~~~~~

Defense Minister Lieberman has instructed COGAT [Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories] to have no interaction with the PA except on security matters. See more on what this entails here:

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/defense-minister-liberman-orders-cogat-to-cut-non-security-ties-with-pa/2016/12/25/

The simple fact of the matter is that the PA is behind this resolution. Their current gloating is obscene. This has been their intention all along: to achieve ends without negotiations and without compromise.

This is a cartoon that Fatah put on its Facebook page after the resolution passed. The Arabic is the list of nations that supported the vote. It suggests an international endorsement of terrorism.

https://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=19588

~~~~~~~~~~

Lieberman also had something to say about France: The French, ludicrously, are planning a “peace conference” on January 15, five days before Obama leaves office. He has called it a “modern day Dreyfus trial. There’s only one difference, this time, instead of the defendant being one Jew, it will be the entire nation of Israel and the State of Israel.

“This summit’s entire purpose is to undermine the State of Israel’s security and tarnish its good name.” (Emphasis added)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4898780,00.html

(The Dreyfus affair, at the end of the 19th century, was a French scandal during which an innocent Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was convicted of treason. Anti-Semitism was at work in France then, and now.)

~~~~~~~~~~

My readers can rest assured that Israel has no intention whatsoever of halting building in Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Quite the contrary.

~~~~~~~~~~

As I complete this and prepare for transmission, I am aware that Secretary of State Kerry is scheduled to give a speech outlining his vision of a “comprehensive peace” between Israel and the PA. I’m sure it will be chock full of untenable ideas and outright lies that seek to further the damage to Israel. There is nothing but nothing he could say that would be constructive or original. How much damage this will do remains to be seen. I must deal with this in my next posting.

Recently, Kerry sent out a “Happy Chanukah” message.

One blogger replied, “Go choke on a latke.” On that note, I close.

12/29/16

Ted Cruz: History Will Remember Obama and Kerry as Enemies of Israel

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

This is a clear example of why I supported and still do, Senator Ted Cruz. He held nothing back and lambasted both Barack Obama and John Kerry as shameful bitter clingers that betrayed Israel and stabbed her in the back, ambushing her at the UN like the cowards they are. Obama’s legacy will be one of treasonous diplomatic terrorism against Israel.

From Obama’s beginning, he has done his level evil best to destroy every underpinning that the principles of America have been set on. He has opened up a monstrous sinkhole of chaos underneath the very foundation of this country and has done a great job at trying to drop us into that abyss. Israel is our oldest and most steadfast ally. We share many things in common and both our countries have been a force for good in this world. Obama wants to destroy both Israel and the US. He is weakening Israel, so the Arab jackal states surrounding her can tear her to shreds. That will never happen and President-elect Donald Trump will stop much of this when he comes into office in just three weeks. Israel said this morning that they have waited 3,000 years… they can wait 30 more days and Trump is telling them to hold on, he’s coming.

From the US Senate/Ted Cruz:

“Like bitter clingers, President Obama and Secretary Kerry are spending every last minute of this administration wreaking havoc domestically and abroad. With their last breath in office, they have struck at Israel, through the United Nations and through today’s disgraceful speech.

“These acts are shameful. They are designed to secure a legacy, and indeed they have: history will record and the world will fully understand Obama and Kerry as relentless enemies of Israel. Their actions were designed to weaken and marginalize Israel, and to embolden its enemies.

“Today’s speech — like Kerry’s 2014 remarks likening Israel to an apartheid state — will enflame rising anti-Semitism in Europe. It will encourage the mullahs who hate Israel and hate America. And it will facilitate ‘law-fare,’ growing legal assaults on Israel through transnational legal fora.

“Kerry’s speech drew a stunning moral equivalence between our great ally Israel and the Palestinian Authority, currently formed in a ‘unity’ government with the vicious terrorists of Hamas. Secretary Kerry declared the Hamas regime in Gaza ‘radical,’ in the same way he declared the duly-elected government of Israel ‘extreme.’ He declared vicious terrorism sponsored by Hamas equal to Israeli settlements in West Bank. And he equated Israel’s celebration of its birth with the Palestinian description of this event as the ‘disaster.’ His speech attempted to lay out an historic and seismic shift towards the delegitimization of our ally, Israel, and the further empowerment of the Palestinian Authority.

“Kerry’s central conclusion, that ‘Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both’ is an inanity that passes as profound only in Ivory Tower faculty lounges. There are roughly 50 majority-Muslim countries in the world. There is one — only one — Jewish state. And yet, for Kerry and Obama, that is too much. The Israeli Knesset has 17 elected Arab members. It has Muslim members and Christian members. In contrast, one searches in vain for Muslim countries that have elected Jewish representatives.

“It is a sign of their radicalism and refusal to defend American interests, that Obama and Kerry choose to attack the only inclusive democracy in the Middle East — a strong, steadfast ally of America — while turning a blind eye to the Islamic terrorism that grows daily.

“America is an unshakable friend of Israel, and we are horrified at what has transpired this week.

“I believe Obama’s and Kerry’s shameful conduct will backfire. That it will be short-lived, and will inspire a bipartisan repudiation of their radical anti-Israel agenda.

“All Americans who understand the value of the U.S.-Israel alliance must immediately and unequivocally reject their false and dangerous narrative, and reassert our fundamental commitment to Israel’s security. Thankfully, Congress and the incoming administration can and I hope will take decisive action to intercept the administration’s final and desperate Hail Mary, and that should begin with eliminating U.S. funding to the U.N., unless and until this disgraceful resolution is reversed.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as well as the incoming administration to chart a new path forward based on America’s national security interests and clear-eyed reality, not on the Obama administration’s globalist agenda and wishful thinking.”

Obama, Kerry, Biden and others plotted this betrayal well in advance of the UN convening. Israel has a ton of proof of it and it will come out, I have no doubt of that. Kerry’s speech yesterday was the most shameful display of betrayal of an ally that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime, it was a sheer gift to the Islamists. I agree with Cruz, this will backfire on Obama and will strengthen support of Israel here in the US. I think it will also cause a major reassessment of the UN, with defunding and possibly withdrawal from their ranks altogether.

The “moral equivalence” that Palestine-defenders like John Kerry use to bludgeon Israel with while ignoring the evil pressed against them on all sides by Islamists who want to annihilate them is simply jaw dropping. This brazen (but inevitable) betrayal of Israel is the most shameful act to come from Obama in a long series of shameful acts. For eight long years, Obama has treated Israel like dirt, but that is about to change.

Ted Cruz said this when the resolution was first passed: “Every Obama foreign policy official should be ashamed of today’s U.N. resolution, and any official who disagrees with or hopes to avoid the anti-Israel legacy of this administration should resign on principle today.” That’s exactly right. The US should expel Palestinian diplomats and immediately cut off funding to the UN. We should also scale back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure. A full investigation should be launched into the actions of Barack Obama, John Kerry and others over this horrific move.

With a Trump administration in place, we need to take a forceful stand against any and all that try to deligitimize Israel. Our response should be swift and forceful and it should be made clear that ANYONE out there that tries to attack the Jewish State will need to answer to the United States.

12/28/16

Obama/Kerry: Diplomatic Terrorism on Israel

By: Denise Simon | FoundersCode.com

Israel was on the edge at least last October, they knew that Obama and Kerry had something in the pipeline against Israel. So it comes down to who wins the debate over Jerusalem? Should there even be a debate and Israel is fighting back on the never-ending use of the words ‘occupy’ and ‘settlement’s and should.

CBS

Bloomberg: When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected last year, the White House threatened to reconsider long-standing U.S. policy to veto U.N. Security Council resolutions on Israel’s presence in the West Bank. At issue was a last-minute interview in which Netanyahu said there would be no Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister. He took back that statement after the election. Nonetheless, the White House directed policymakers to draw up a set of options for how Obama could “preserve the two-state solution,” according to one U.S. official privy to the process.

So far, nothing has come of Obama’s threat. Indeed last month, Obama signed an agreement with Israel to extend the U.S. subsidy of its military for another ten years. In foreign policy, Obama is focused on the collapse of U.S. policy in Syria, which has become an even greater humanitarian emergency in the last month with the Russian and Iranian-led siege of Aleppo. Politically, the White House is working to elect Hillary Clinton as Obama’s successor.

Yet with a little more than three months left of his presidency, Israeli officials privately say they worry Obama intends to try to level the playing field between the Palestinians and Israelis before he leaves office. The threat of a last-minute speech, executive order, or U.N. action has stirred some of Israel’s friends in Washington. Last month, for example, 88 senators signed a letter to Obama urging him to restate “long-standing U.S. policy” to veto one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.

The Obama administration has not made such a statement. This week, however, White House spokesman Joshua Earnest “strongly condemned” Israel’s approval of 98 new housing units in the West Bank settlement of Shilo. A CBS correspondent noted that this phrasing is “usually reserved” for terrorist attacks. More here.

****

So Israel put some assets into the system and worked to determine who, what and when such actions would happen. Since the UN vote, Israel says it has iron clad evidence of the United States complicity in the text for the vote.

****

Haaretz: he Egyptians distributed a Security Council resolution on the settlements last week, and demanded a vote within 24 hours, only to withdraw it after pressure from the prime minister’s bureau in Jerusalem and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Dermer, said Monday that Israel had evidence that the Obama administration was behind the wording of the resolution and had cooperated with the Palestinians behind Israel’s back. The document published on the Egyptian new site might be the evidence Israel has. On December 22, the day the original Security Council vote was to have taken place, the Israeli news site Walla published a report almost identical to the one on the Egyptian news site. Walla quoted a senior Israeli official as stating that in a meeting between Kerry and a Palestinian delegation to Washington headed by Palestinian Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat, agreement was reached on the matter of a resolution against the settlements, and that Kerry said the United States would not veto it. More here.

****

What else was Israel watching?

On December 23, 2016, the UN General Assembly approved spending $138,700 to create a “database” of all companies that conduct business – directly or indirectly – relating to Israeli “settlements” in Arab-claimed territories. The idea of a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) blacklist came from a March 2016 resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. According to UN documentation, the $138,700 will be used “to pay for one staff member to create the database over a period of 8 months and present a report” to the Human Rights Council in March 2017. In other words, the December authorization backdated approval of an expenditure for an operation already underway.

When the General Assembly’s Budget Committee met to approve the UN budget, Israel proposed to delete approval specifically for funding the blacklist.The Committee rejected the Israeli amendment 6 in favor (Australia, Canada, Guatemala Israel, Palau and the United States), 151 against, with 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Georgia, Honduras and Ghana).

After Israel lost the vote on funding the BDS item, it declared it was “disassociating” from the General Assembly’s subsequent approval of the UN budget as a whole. Despite the U.S. voting against funding the blacklist initially, it voted in favor of the UN budget, and made no mention of any problem funding BDS.

Date

December 23, 2016

Title

Fifth Committee Vote on Israeli Proposed Oral Amendment to Resolution on Programme Budget Appropriations for 2016-2017 Biennium, UN Meeting Coverage

Original Source

https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/gaab4224.doc.htm

Attachment

Click here to view this document in MS Word/PDF format

Note

Israel’s oral amendment was rejected by a vote of 6 in favor (Australia, Canada, Guatemala Israel, Palau and the United States), 151 against, with 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Georgia, Honduras and Ghana)

****

So, here is Kerry on 12/28/2016 speaking while Obama is on vacation in Hawaii:

AP: Secretary of State John Kerry says that if Israel rejects a two-state solution for peace with the Palestinian people, “it can be Jewish or it can be democratic.”

Kerry was responding to withering Israeli criticism of the United States’ abstention from a vote condemning Israeli settlement construction. He reiterated the American position that a two-state solution giving both Israelis and Palestinians a home state is the best roadmap to peace. He also made it clear that despite recent differences in policy, the United States continues to be Israel’s closest ally.

Israel has been furious at the United States since the UN vote late last week. But Kerry said in a farewell speech at the State Department on Wednesday that the vote was “in keeping with” American values for democracy.

****

The full text of his speech is here, but while he ways that Israel has to be either Jewish or a democracy and not both, Kerry also suggests that Israel pay restitution to the Palestinians. In 2009, the United States gave Gaza $900 million, which is under the control of Abu Mazen.

12/28/16

Leaked Transcript Shows Obama Worked with Palestinians on Anti-Israel Resolution

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

Last week, Obama and his jackals stabbed Israel in the back at the UN over the two-state solution. Bibi Netanyahu and other Israelis have come straight out and accused the Obama administration of being behind the UN resolution that took direct aim at Israel. And the proof of that duplicity is now coming out. John Kerry was actively striking a deal with the Palestinians according to transcripts coming out of Egypt. Obama, Kerry and Biden have all been caught red handed lying over this.

Congress started to move today to cut off funding to the UN until this resolution is reversed thanks to Ted Cruz. What the ruling tries to force is Israel handing over Christianity’s most holy sites to the Palestinians. They would have to forfeit Western Jerusalem to Islamists. Not going to happen. Meanwhile, Obama and others are calling the transcripts fabrications. I very much doubt that.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Prior to the UN Security Council vote on anti-Israeli settlement resolution 2334, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with a Palestinian delegation in early December in Washington to discuss the draft, agreeing to cooperate, according to transcripts released by Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Saba’a.

According to the report, Kerry along with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, met with Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erkat and Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service.

The reported transcripts reflect statements by numerous Israeli officials claiming that the resolution was orchestrated by the Obama administration. The source of the leaked transcripts was not named.

The United States on Friday broke with a longstanding approach of diplomatically shielding Israel and abstained on the United Nations Security Council resolution that passed with 14 countries in favor and none against.

“We have ironclad information that emanates from sources in the Arab world and that shows the Obama administration helped craft this resolution and pushed hard for its eventual passage,” said David Keyes, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US State Department has denied claims that the US was involved in perpetuating the resolution.

Meanwhile, Erekat has denied the claims written in the documents.

A defiant Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday defended the US decision allowing the United Nations to condemn Israeli settlements, while lashing out at the so-called “settler agenda” which he claimed is hurting prospects for peace – in a wide-ranging speech that inflamed tensions with Israel and drew a swift rebuke from the Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi was pissed and I don’t blame him. Kerry doubled down on the betrayal and justified it. Just reprehensible and treasonous. What do you expect from these people who brought the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House and crawled between the sheets with Jihadists?

In a written statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped Kerry’s speech as “skewed.” That’s putting it mildly. “Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced in the UN, his speech tonight was skewed against Israel,” he said. “For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict — Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries.” Bibi then slammed Kerry and Obama: “Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.” Indeed, they don’t.

Trump is urging Israel to hold on for three more weeks until he comes into power. Netanyahu said he looks forward to working with the incoming Trump administration to “mitigate” the damage from the resolution and ultimately “repeal” it. Paul Ryan also had something to say about this monstrous move: “After allowing this anti-Israel resolution to pass the UN, Secretary Kerry has no credibility to speak on Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Obama is deliberately sabotaging Israel and making Trump’s transition as difficult as possible. The White House hotly denied the report in the Egyptian media claiming Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice discussed the UN resolution with a top Palestinian official nearly two weeks before Friday’s Security Council vote. Ned Price, spokesman for the US National Security Council, called the report a “fabrication” and said the “meeting never occurred.” Netanyahu reiterated that his government has “absolutely incontestable evidence” that the US organized and advanced the resolution. And he referred to the details reported in Egyptian media as the “tip of the iceberg.” The State Department’s own website reflects that Kerry was scheduled for a meeting with the Palestinian official at the State Department on Dec. 12th, around the time of the reported discussions. The official website, however, offers no details on what was discussed. Sucks to be caught with your hands in the Middle East cookie jar.

John Kerry stated Wednesday that if Israel chooses to remain a singular state with Palestine, “it cannot be both” Jewish and democratic. That’s simple then… they remain Jewish and tell the US to stuff it. In reality, it’s a false choice; a straw man argument. It’s a lie and the last wicked gasp of a failed legacy and presidency.

09/12/16

The Terrible Legacy of 9/11

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

[Editor’s note: I was asked (along with their other contributing editors) by the outstanding website Family Security Matters, to offer up our thoughts on how we “view the significance of 9/11, fifteen years on.” Here was my response, which they posted over the weekend. Roger Aronoff]

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the tragedy is that the Islamic jihadists are winning too many battles around the world, and have forced the West and its partners to abridge freedoms in pursuit of security. And despite the claims of the Obama administration, the U.S. is not succeeding in leading a coalition of nations to defeat the enemy, which it identifies as ISIL. In fact, ISIL, more commonly known as ISIS, is now operating fully in 18 countries—a three-fold increase in just two years—according to a National Counterterrorism Center report leaked to NBC News in August.

The fact is, after nearly eight years of Obama and Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry, things have gotten much worse in many hot spots across the globe. Through the work of our Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), we have concluded that Obama came to the White House seeking to empower the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa, and the Iranian Shi’ite regime in the Persian Gulf region. Because of our unsigned nuclear “deal” with Iran, we have few options when it comes to restraining their behavior. We pretend that we have a common interest with both Russia and Iran, which is to defeat ISIS. But ISIS is just one manifestation of the jihadist ideology that seeks dominance, and submission, as it slaughters tens of thousands of people in its long, drawn out death march.

When the U.S. removed its remaining troops from Iraq in 2011, President Obama announced that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” That was the same year that the so-called “Arab Spring” led to the fall of America’s ally in Egypt, the start of the Syrian civil war, and the West’s war against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, who had abandoned his WMD program and was fighting against al Qaeda. That is when America switched sides in the Global War on Terror, as we documented in our first CCB report, and further supported in our second report back in June. Benghazi turned out to be a pile-up of scandal, failed policy and dereliction of duty.

Today we have Libya as a failed state, dominated by jihadist groups; Syria as the home base of ISIS and the scene of what even The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof calledObama’s “worst mistake,” comparing it to Rwanda, with close to a half a million dead; and an emboldened Iran, regularly humiliating America because it can, since it has received an estimated $100 billion in formerly frozen funds, and there is no signed deal for which they can be held accountable. In addition, peace between Israel and the Palestinians is less likely than when President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton came to power.

Meanwhile, the corrupt news media pretend that Obama has been a successful foreign policy president, when, in fact, he has been a disaster. Fifteen years after 9/11, the frequency of terrorist and jihadist attacks is such that they are quickly forgotten in a fog of war that is rapidly enveloping the world.

This article was originally published on the website of Family Security Matters.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

03/11/16

The Push to Pressure Israel Intensifies Amid Violence

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

It might have taken a terrorist attack that included the death of an American, about a mile away from Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting in Jaffa, Israel, this week, to wake up Americans to the ongoing terrorist wave that has been sweeping Israel for months. The victim was Taylor Force, a 29-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, killed by an Islamic terrorist. Force’s wife was among 10 others stabbed by the same Palestinian terrorist, and she is in critical condition.

The futility of Biden’s last ditch effort to help give President Obama an additional notch on his legacy belt was underscored by the event, especially since the administration has sought to undermine Israel on several key issues, including the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement.

Through the use of U.S. Customs and Border Control, the Obama administration recently further politicized trade with Israel by requiring that imports from the West Bank be labeled as being from that area rather than from Israel, reportedThe National Interest in February.

Continue reading →

02/2/16

Iran Continues Mocking and Humiliating American Leaders

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

The New York Times continues to misrepresent the Iran deal as a signed document with the potential to motivate moderate Iranians to reform their totalitarian regime. However, it is more than obvious that the P5+1 did not actually sign a deal with Iran, and that this unsigned agreement cannot bring about change in that country.

Instead, the deal has emboldened those who hold the reins of power in Iran. On January 28, the Times’ editorial board lamented that “Next month’s elections in Iran do not bode well for Iranians eager for more political and social freedoms or for the promising new relationship with the West symbolized by the recent deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program.”

“Even before any ballots are cast,” they argue, “the death-to-America hard-liners who bitterly opposed the deal are stacking the deck against moderates led by President Hassan Rouhani, who signed the agreement and is more open than others in the power structure to further engagement with Western nations as well as expanding rights and freedoms for Iranian citizens.”

The inaccuracies contained within these few lines are too many to count. Iran is not interested in engaging with Western nations, other than for business purposes, nor is it interested in expanding the rights of its citizens. Also, even Iranians abroad do not support President Rouhani. When Rouhani recently came to France, thousands of Iranians and others took to the streets to demonstrate against him and his “façade of moderation,” according to CNS News.

As we have reported, the nuclear agreement has not actually been signed. In aletter from the State Department, Julia Frifield stated that “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document.” Rather, the Iranian “deal” is just a set of political obligations which Iran can interpret in whatever way it wants.

How exactly can the mainstream media keep perpetuating this falsehood about a signed deal in their news reports? It is because members of the mainstream media have championed, and will continue to champion, this deal at any cost as long as it is considered part of President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. Such reporters will likely attribute any visible sign of a supposedly reformed Iran to Obama’s diplomacy rather than to internal forces. Reductions in freedom will undoubtedly be attributed to hard-liner resistance.

“So much for the nuclear deal’s promise of empowering Iranian reformers,”commented The Wall Street Journal on January 26. The recent “purge of candidates betrayed an especially hard-line approach,” it writes.

However, if President Rouhani is a force for moderation, as the Times’ editorial board contends, then why has he overseen more than 2,000 executions during his tenure? Iran performs more executions than any nation except for China. And that doesn’t even begin to describe the human rights abuses that are rampant in Iran, particularly towards women and children. This Gatestone article describes those conditions under the “moderate” Rouhani regime.

“Executions, however, skyrocketed under both [former President Mohammad] Khatami and now Rouhani relative to the capital punishment rates under their respective predecessors,” argues the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin in an opinion piece posted by Newsweek titled, “There Are No Iranian Moderates.” “…Americans continue to wallow under the delusion that factions are hooks upon which to hang American policy,” he argues.

The truth is that there are no Iranian moderates in power, and those reformers that the West might champion wield little to no power.

Rubin sees Rouhani’s struggles as a façade, a ruse to “project an image of moderation to relieve pressure.” He argues that Rouhani was elected for the sole purpose of overcoming Iran’s financial woes.

Now that Implementation Day has come and gone, President Rouhani is free to court French and Italian businesses, which recently signed deals valued in the tens of billions.

“It seems quite evident that the nuclear agreement has given the regime added motivation to crack down on Iranian civil society, become more belligerent in the region, and keep Western influence at bay,” argues Italy’s former foreign minister, Giulio Maria Terzi. While Terzi calls a moderate Iran a “fantasy,” he still calls for Western business deals that require Iran to engage in reform.

But even The New York Times editorial board casts Rouhani as “a creature of Iran’s establishment, not a revolutionary” who “has tapped into widespread popular support for ending the country’s long isolation.” It seems unclear what element, exactly, in Iran wanted to continue that isolation.

While the media and the Obama administration continue to hold to a non-existent agreement which does little to hold the regime accountable, Iran has become emboldened both in business and militarily. Not only did the Iranians film American sailors at gunpoint, on January 12 the Iranians flew an unarmed drone over the USS Harry Truman while this carrier was sailing in international waters. The United States did not shoot down the drone. Instead, President Obama allowed Iran to claim another propaganda victory, with Iranian naval commander Adm. Habibollah Sayyari claiming that it was an act of Iranian “bravery” to surveil U.S. forces.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei further humiliated the Obama administration when he awarded medals to the five commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) who had seized two American Navy vessels and held 10 American sailors at gunpoint, claiming they had trespassed into Iranian waters. Khamenei told his commanders, while awarding them medals, that the capture of these sailors “was in fact an act of God, who brought the Americans into our waters so they would be arrested with their hands on their heads through your timely measure.” Whether they had trespassed or not, the Iranian action was illegal, and the Americans should never have allowed them on board the vessels,according to Retired Admiral James “Ace” Lyons.

Iran is very pleased, having just acknowledged receiving more than $100 billion of formerly frozen overseas assets through sanctions relief, contradicting the recent comments of Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry has acknowledged that some of that money would be going to the IRGC, labeled by his own State Department as a terrorist organization, but he claimed that they weren’t getting $100 billion, and he didn’t know where that figure came from. He assured us it was more like $55 billion that they would be receiving. He said $100 billion was a “fictional number.”

But don’t look for the media to hold Kerry accountable. They, like the Obama administration, are still determined to convince us what a great deal this is, and how it has saved us from Iran developing nuclear weapons. Liberal news organizations are expecting this disastrous, unsigned agreement with Iran to prompt concrete changes in that nation. But President Obama’s legacy will likely be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, with Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, empowered and enabled to expand its destructive impact.

01/22/16

Obama Continues Caving to Iran While Taking Credit for Diplomacy

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

The mainstream media cannot stand that the film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, in depicting the violence in Benghazi and the heroism of the Global Response Staff (GRS), has a straightforward common-sense message. Instead, reporters like Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post see fit to mock that heroism, and even suggest that President Obama’s latest appeasement to Iran deserves equal Hollywood fame.

“But, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry secured the release of American prisoners in Iran just hours after ‘13 Hours’ opened, the movie’s simplistic, shooting-good-talking-bad moral scheme began to ring impressively false,” arguesHornaday. “Maybe one day, State Department envoy Brett McGurk, who led the team that negotiated the release, will get his own big-screen blockbuster, even if it doesn’t feature prominent biceps, heavy ordnance and a careening SUV with its wheels on fire.”

A key message of 13 Hours, and the Benghazi scandal, is that the GRS’s gun-toting heroism wouldn’t have been necessary if President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hadn’t been derelict in their duty to secure the U.S. Special Mission Compound beforehand, or to provide military support to the Americans once the shooting started.

It has been President Obama’s disastrous policies that have put Americans in harm’s way abroad. It was also his recent decision to swap five American hostages in exchange for seven Iranians convicted of or charged with violating sanctions, as well as the removal of 14 Iranians from an Interpol watch list. Of course it is great that the Americans have been released, but at what price?

“As unbelievable as it will be for a lot of people, the two channels [the Iran agreement and prisoner swap] were really separate,” an unnamed U.S. officialtold Robin Wright of The New Yorker. Yet Iran released these hostages at this opportune time. Unbelievable is a good word for it.

The latest developments with Iran prove one thing: President Obama and Secretary Kerry have been right. Their diplomatic strategic patience brought us to the point where we could make such a great deal with Iran. “Iran gets back men who were assisting its military ambitions while we get innocents,” writes The Wall Street Journal. “This is similar to the lopsided prisoner swaps that Mr. Obama previously made with Cuba for Alan Gross and the Taliban for alleged deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.”

In addition to the exchange of prisoners for hostages, Iran will be receiving upwards of $55 billion (the figure cited by Secretary Kerry)—although The New York Times is reporting that the number is “roughly $100 billion,” and others say it is closer to $150 billion—of their previously frozen assets which have been unavailable to them, and which will now support whatever they choose to invest in. That will certainly include their continued support of jihadist and terrorist organizations across the globe.

The media continue to fail to report truthfully about the Iran deal. CNN’s anchor Wolf Blitzer is still peddling the falsehood that Iran and the P5+1 have a signed deal, and that, so far Iran, is living up to its end.

“Do they formally sit down around a table to sign some sort of document, some sort of international agreement?” asked Blitzer of correspondent Nic Robertson who was in Vienna, Austria on Saturday as the world was waiting for the official release of American hostages and Iranian frozen assets. “We know they did that several months ago when they announced the nuclear deal, but as far as implementation, is there some sort of diplomatic protocol we should anticipate?”

As we have repeatedly cited, there is no signed Iran deal, only a set of political obligations that Iran can interpret whatever way it wants. Is it possible that Blitzer and his producers are unaware of that? And there is no verification that Iran is living up to its end of the non-deal, other than the IAEA’s certification. By many accounts, those guarantees don’t count for much, as there are many locations off limits to inspectors. No one has seen the agreement between the IAEA and Iran—including President Obama or Secretary Kerry, to hear them tell it—and Iran has a history of deceit. In the end, they didn’t even have to account for the possible military dimensions (PMD) of their nuclear program.

Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy—formerly of the CIA and DIA—has put together an incredible list of Iran’s violations of both the spirit and the letter of this non-agreement in an article on the Fox News website, as well as the astonishing list of concessions the Obama administration made in order to claim that they got a deal that will halt Iran’s path toward nuclear weapons. For example, the fact that Iran shipped some of its enriched uranium to Russia, which was hailed by The New York Times as “one of the biggest achievements in his [Obama’s] foreign policy record…,” is another shell game. Actually, according to Fleitz, “this was a swap for an equivalent amount of uranium ore that can be converted into enriched uranium in a few months.”

Virtually every restriction in the “deal” is not what it claims to be.

Again, according to Fleitz:

How can Obama officials say this nuclear deal is a great diplomatic success?

The answer to these questions is this: because the Obama administration wanted a legacy nuclear agreement with Iran so badly they made any concession necessary to get one.

When Iranian officials refused to give up their uranium enrichment program, the U.S. said they could keep it.

When Iran balked on including restrictions on ballistic missile tests in the agreement, they were removed.

To get around Tehran’s refusal to answer questions about its past nuclear weapons work, this issue was moved into a secret side deal between the IAEA and Iran.

And there’s much more that’s wrong with this deal. You should read Fleitz’s column in its entirety.

Again, Iran is able to take U.S. sailors and force them onto their knees at gunpoint, and force a sailor to apologize on camera for entering Iranian waters. And since they were released, an Iranian backed Shiite militia in Iraq has captured three American contractors. CBS News reported that the Obama administration had “hoped” that Iran would have shown restraint in having their militias kidnapping Americans, at least for a while.

How well did Iran treat our guys, besides forcing them at gunpoint to put their hands behind their heads? The administration has argued that the 10 sailors were treated well.

Maybe with our new relationship, the Iranians just asked our sailors politely to do this staged video, and they went along with it.

“It was a mistake. That was our fault, and we apologize for our mistake,” said one sailor in an Iranian video.

Secretary of State John Kerry actually thanked the Iranians for their proper treatment of our American sailors. Seriously. “I could not be and I know the President could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform,” said Secretary Kerry, according to the Hill. “I also want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response.”

CNN has heralded this as part of “The Week That Changed U.S.-Iran Relations…”

Other presidents might have wanted to make an international issue about the capture of members of our military. But as President Obama likes to present in his frequent straw-man arguments, there are only two choices: place hundreds of thousands of troops in harms way, or be smart like him and avoid using force unless absolutely necessary. During his victory lap on Sunday, he said, “This is a good day, because, once again, we’re seeing what’s possible with strong American diplomacy,” adding, “We’ve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East.” It depends on what the definition of “progress” is.

Some experts in the field believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons. Iran has never acknowledged a military use for its enrichment and ballistic missile programs.

The U.S. finally did impose some sanctions “against 11 people and companies involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program,” according to USA Today. The Wall Street Journal called them “very limited sanctions.” “We will continue to enforce these sanctions vigorously,” said President Obama. “We are going to remain vigilant about it.”

But what is not stated—besides the fact that there is no signed deal, and no agreed upon terms—is that the sanctions regime has been largely a charade as well.

Before the recent sanctions relief, the U.S. could not sufficiently track Iranian oil tankers around the globe. As of March 2015, there were 51 Iranian oil tankers under U.S. sanctions, yet the U.S. government could not “establish under what flag at least 31 of these tankers are doing business,” wrote Claudia Rosett for The Wall street Journal last year.

“They can be identified by their unique seven-digit hull numbers, or IMO numbers, issued for the life of each ship,” wrote Rosett. “But a ship’s flag also is a vital identifier, one under which it signals its position, carries cargo and presents credentials to visit ports, buy insurance and pay fees.” Even in 2012, the U.S. granted exemptions to 11 nations importing Iranian oil, according to Bloomberg at the time.

“Iran has again shown the world that taking American hostages while Barack Obama is President can yield a diplomatic and military windfall,” states The Wall Street Journal.

While President Obama and most of the media tout diplomacy to deal with Iran’s misdeeds, and claim that America has a new relationship with this theocratic, totalitarian regime, more hostages will inevitably be taken. And more blood, sweat, and tears may be shed as a result of this administration’s disastrous policies.

The media must do their job and look critically at these issues, rather than assume the role of enabler for President Obama’s phony and dangerous legacy.