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2016

The Times and the Stars By Marilyn Penn

There are two American women whose obituaries were reported in today’s NYTimes: one for the actress who played a princess in Star Wars and one for a ground-breaking physicist and astronomer. The former, Carrie Fisher, achieved fame through the character of Princess Leia and later through her books about her own bi-polar disorder and drug addiction. The latter, Vera Rubin, “transformed modern physics and astronomy with her observations showing that galaxies and stars are immersed in the gravitational grip of vast clouds of dark matter.” (NYT 12/28) As significant details of her life, the Times reports that Carrie Fisher had one marriage lasting less than a year and one daughter born out of wedlock; Vera Rubin was married to another prominent physicist for 60 years, bearing four children who all earned their own Ph.D.’s

A capsule description of Vera Rubin offers that she was “cheerful and plain-spoken, had a lifelong love of the stars, championed women in science and was blunt about the limits of humankind’s vaunted knowledge of nature” (NYT 12/28) A capsule description of Ms Fisher delineates that “she acknowledged taking drugs like LSD and Percodan throughout the 1970’s and ’80’s and later said that she was using cocaine while making “The Empire Strikes Back” In l985, after filming a role in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” she had a nearly fatal overdose. She had her stomach pumped and checked herself into a 30-day rehab program.” (NYT 1228)

I’m sure that everyone who heard of Ms Fisher’s death at age 60 was saddened that this woman suffered from mental illness and drug addiction which undoubtedly hastened her early demise from a heart attack. My question is which woman had her picture and obit on the front page of the Times and what does that say about a society more interested in casual fame and derelict behavior than in genius, hard work and a purposeful life – one that should serve as the ultimate role model for women young and old.

Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.” Obama’s Treachery Exposed By Joan Swirsky

Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.”

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 23rd, 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.

John Kerry’s Final, Harmful Insult to Israel A shameful end to the Obama foreign policy.By Elliott Abrams

In the Obama administration’s waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and the Levant, of China in Asia and the western Pacific, and of Putin’s Russia in both Europe and the Middle East, all continue. One might have thought any of these could be the subject of a final address by the president or the secretary of state.

But one would have been wrong. John Kerry delivered what is probably the last major speech of the Obama administration Wednesday, and its subject was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and especially the growth of Israeli settlements. So the Obama administration ends where it began: obsessed with Israelis and Palestinians as if their struggle were the key to peace in the entire region, and with construction of homes in settlements and in Jerusalem as if it were the major roadblock to a peace agreement.

In a speech that was remarkable for its length, its defensive and even whiny tone, its attack on the government of Israel, and for its lack of new ideas, Kerry tried to explain both last week’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution and eight years of failed Obama policy. His central argument was that the two-state solution is essential, is possible, and is being destroyed by Israeli settlements. The administration did not veto the resolution, he said, because it was balanced: It rebuked Israel for settlement expansion but also rebuked the Palestinians for incitement.

The latter point is significant, and shows the fundamental failure of Kerry’s argument. The resolution passed last week will do actual damage to Israel, because calling all the settlements and even construction in East Jerusalem a violation of international law opens Israel to further boycotts and to prosecution as criminals (in local courts all over the world or the International Criminal Court) of Israeli officials or of settlers. The “balance” that moved the administration to permit adoption of the resolution was non-existent: There is in the resolution no call upon the Palestinians to stop glorifying terrorism by naming schools and parks after murderers and celebrating their “achievements.” Instead the resolution does not mention the Palestinians in that context at all and merely “calls for compliance with obligations under international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism…and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism.” Israel is condemned but the Palestinians are never criticized in that supposedly “balanced” text.

Kerry noted in his speech that “We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop.” Kerry actually spoke at some length about these Palestinian practices, as if repeating how much he dislikes them strengthened his point. But it does not, because the United States has been complaining about this for all eight years of the Obama administration to no effect whatsoever. The key point is that the Palestinians are never penalized for glorifying terror and the U.N. resolution doesn’t penalize them either. The resolution will harm Israel and do nothing at all to the Palestinians, which means it is not balanced and Kerry’s argument here is simply false.

An open letter to Theresa May by Melanie Phillips

Dear Prime Minister,

It was sickening to see that your government last week voted for the declaration of diplomatic war against Israel embodied in resolution 2334 passed by the UN Security Council.

Bad enough that Britain didn’t use its position as a permanent SC member to vote against this vicious resolution and thereby stop it in its tracks. Worse, far worse was that your government voted for it. In doing so, Britain signed up to propositions that repudiate law, justice and truth.

Now reports have surfaced that, yet more appallingly, Britain was actually instrumental in getting 2334 passed by helping draft the resolution and then stiffening New Zealand’s resolve in proposing it.

I don’t know whether that is correct. I suspect it may well be. I think, nevertheless, that you spoke from the heart the other week when you told the Conservative Friends of Israel of your admiration for Israel as a “remarkable country” and a “beacon of tolerance” and your warm feelings towards the Jewish people.

I also think, however, that you know little about the history of the Jews in the Middle East, the part played in that history by previous British governments or the infernal strategic aims of the people known as the “Palestinians”. I believe, therefore, you might not fully grasp the implications of supporting UNSC resolution 2334.

So let me spell out exactly what your government has done by voting in this way.

It has put itself firmly behind the attempt to exterminate the State of Israel under the cowardly cover of vacuous pieties about supporting two democratic states and opposing terrorism and incitement. It has done this by endorsing the inflammatory falsehoods and legal and historic fictions deployed by those whose purpose is to destroy the State of Israel.

It has shredded the concept of diplomatic integrity by delegitimising Israel’s legal actions in defence of its survival while legitimising the manifestly false claim to the land by those who want Israel gone.

It has put rocket fuel behind the discriminatory and bigoted BDS movement whose aim is to delegitimise Israel and bring about its destruction.

By declaring that Israel’s borders should be established on terms demanded by its mortal enemies, the British government has backed coerced surrender to aggressors bent on Israel’s extermination.

Barack Obama’s swan song to Israel By Herb London

Now that the smoke has cleared at the United Nations, there is little question about President Obama’s intentions; they are now crystal clear. Incontrovertible evidence exists that suggests the proposal for a return to the 1967 borders in Israel was orchestrated by the White House. By any measure that is a break from the historic ties between the U.S. and Israel and, as many commentators have noted, an act of betrayal.

It is also an act that cannot be trivialized. Of course, Israel will ignore the proposition. Netanyahu hasn’t any alternative. President Trump will regard it as an openly hostile act and may repudiate it by naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel. But what must also be realized is that even a coat of paint in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank is technically illegal and a violation of international law according to the Hague Court of International Justice. While the court doesn’t have the ability to impose its will, as was demonstrated by China’s President Xi repudiating a decision on the Spratly islands, it can bog down the Israeli government in legal harassment.

Most significantly, this proposal could be a casus belli. Suppose Palestinian activists decide to take matters into their own hands by arguing they have a legitimate claim to Samaria and Judea thereby employing force to obtain the territory they have acquired through legal decree. What Obama may not have thought through is how disruptive his proposal might be. Moreover, since the Sunni nations have put the Palestinian question behind them, it is odd that President Obama should insert it into the international equation as a front burner issue. Now terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Quds can claim a legitimate right to attack an Israeli government theoretically violating the law.

Even the insertion of a note into the Western Wall, a practice that has gone on as a Jewish religious ritual since 1967, can be declared an act violating the U.N. proposal. That Obama chose this matter as his swan song is revealing. His hostility towards Israel has been manifest in many ways, but at no point in the past has an American president acted as Obama has. This White House abstention and behind the scenes maneuvering with sponsoring states is unprecedented. The lies leading to the decision and rationalizations in the aftermath are also unprecedented.

In fact, this decision puts a slow burn on Donald Trump. Despite the number of global issues he will be obliged to digest setting foot in the White House from Syria to NATO, from the South China Sea air perimeter to North Korea, he will now be saddled with a Palestinian state issue most officials thought was on hold for the foreseeable future.

Obama has virtually destroyed any legacy he hoped to transmit to future historians about his eight years in office. He has left in ruins all he tried to manage.

The world is in disarray in large part because of his mismanagement or ignoring any management.

His ego won’t allow a dispassionate assessment of the Obama presidency, but if one were to do so after this recent U.N. fiasco, Barack Obama would have to be considered among the worst presidents in American history.
Dr. Herb London is president of the London Center for Policy Research and is co-author with Jed Babbin of “The BDS War Against Israel.”

“Norwegian Islam”? A smooth-talking stealth jihadist continues his rise to the top of the Norwegian cultural establishment. Bruce Bawer

Who is Mohammed Usman Rana? He’s a 31-year-old Norwegian doctor and newspaper columnist who first appeared on my radar in 2007 when, as an undergraduate at the University of Oslo, he took part in a debate about Muslim attitudes toward gay people. Rana, who at the time was head of UiO’s Muslim Student Association, said that he personally opposed executing gays, but refused to criticize countries that punish homosexuality with death. Pressed further on the issue by his opponents, Rana pulled a slick switcheroo, charging that it was not he but they who were displaying intolerance. How dare they sit in judgment of Islamic law?

Did Rana’s failure to condemn the execution of gay people make him an outcast? Of course not – we’re talking about Scandinavia here, after all. Only a few months after the above-mentioned debate, he wrote an op-ed forAftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, in which he picked up where he’d left off. Norwegians, he complained in the piece, are “secular extremists” who are insufficiently respectful of orthodox Islam, who hope for an “Islamic reformation” that would in fact mutilate the religion, and who prefer to hear from secular Muslims and ex-Muslims (think Ayaan Hirsi Ali) than from genuine believers such as himself.

Rana’s essay won an award from Aftenposten – a victory that catapulted him into the top ranks of the nation’s commentariat and made him, in the words of author Ole Asbjørn Ness, “Aftenposten’s deadly serious house Islamist.” Who, by the way, chose to give Rana the award? A fellow by the name of Knut Olav Åmås, who at the time was an editor of Aftenposten and who happens to be openly gay. Yes, that’s right: a gay editor gave a major career boost to a writer who refused to criticize the death penalty for gay people. Welcome to Norway.

This year saw another milestone for Rana: his first book. It was published by one of Norway’s oldest and most distinguished houses, Aschehoug, and it was launched at a splashy event hosted by Fritt Ord, a free-speech foundation, where Rana was given an oddly jocund introduction by Fritt Ord’s CEO, none other than the aforementioned Knut Olav Åmås. Also on hand to praise Rana were Trine Skei Grande, head of the Norwegian Liberal Party (who took the opportunity to slam Fox News for its purported Islamophobia), and Hanne Skartveit, political editor of Norway’s largest newspaper, VG. (Interestingly, while Fritt Ord was given a media lashing in 2013 for supporting a book project by Islam critic Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, aka “Fjordman,” nobody publicly criticized Fritt Ord’s support for Rana.)

ENDING THE CONFUSION OF THE OBAMA YEARS BY HOWARD ROTBERG

Terrorism isn’t an existential threat?

I have been writing about terrorism now for 13 years. Like many other writers, the tragic events of 9/11 in September, 2001 were one impetus for my inquiry into the goals and methods of terrorism. The other impetus is a growing recognition that terrorism often seems to work exactly as it is planned to do: it so strikes fear into the minds of otherwise good people that they begin to submit to the moral framework of the terrorists and begin to adopt the cause of the terrorists.

Unfortunately, during the Obama Presidency, both politicians and left-leaning journalists have scoffed at the proposition that terrorism poses any existential threat. That is because they define “existential” narrowly to mean anything that could defeat, destroy or wipe out America. They do not, as I do, define existential to include not just living but living “free” and having individual human rights, a fair Justice System and the other Constitutional protections. For me, submission to the ideology of Islamists destroys bit by bit what I see as “free” existence. To the extent that we give in, submit to, respect, tolerate or empathize with the cause of the terrorists, we have lost our freedom and have gone down the road to submission, whether or not our militaries are defeated in “conventional war.” We can look at opinions in the media and the universities to see this empathy, or look at how the Democratic Party is considering a Muslim with contacts among Islamist terror supporting organizations to be the Chair of the DNC.

“Live Free or Die” is the official motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire, adopted by the state in 1945. How things have changed in American political culture since 1945.

The Left and the Obama administration see an existential threat as one only coming from major nuclear powers. They ignore that Obama’s Iran “deal” will allow Iran to give nuclear weapons to its terrorist proxies.

The Left seems to be mostly concerned that the government will in response to terrorism pass tough security laws that will inhibit the “rights” of Islamists and their supporters or at least be offensive to them. Some naively think that the purpose of terrorism is only to wage an asymmetrical type of warfare against more military strong foes and hence to eventually defeat them, and anything short of that is not an existential threat.

Simonsen and Spindlove, in their textbook on terrorism, entitled Terrorism Today: The Past, the Players, the Future, say that terrorism, by its violence against civilians, brings awareness of the alleged grievance, uses the media to spread knowledge of the cause, and provokes fear, all of which attempt to secure policy changes and weaken government’s resolve. Attaining these policy changes occurs as a fearful people seek to feed the wild animal in their midst, hoping that its appetite for more random violence will be sated.

Terrorism is the modus operandi of Islamists – the overtly violent jihadists seeking to spread Sharia Law and a restoration of an Islamic Caliphate. Obscene acts of violence, often involving suicide bombing are then followed inevitably by apologists and propagandists alleging that Islam is a “religion of peace” and that terrorism can best be fought by more understanding, tolerance, compassion and acceptance of political Islam’s goals.

John Kerry: Obstacle To Peace: Kerry believes that peace is what happens when the bad guys win. Daniel Greenfield

Before Obama decided to “abstain” from standing with Israel in a UN vote condemning the Jewish State, he hadabstained from voting in defense of America in a UN resolution condemning the United States.

Obama, like Power and Kerry, have treated Israel just like they treated the United States.

John Forbes Kerry began his miserable career as a traitor seeking “peace” by pandering to the Communist leader negotiating on behalf of the Viet Cong. He concludes his miserable career in the Senate and as Secretary of State by going to war in the name of “peace” against the only democracy in the Middle East on behalf of a totalitarian Islamic ideology and its terrorist bands of killers.

Half a century has passed. The Berlin Wall fell. So did the Soviet Union. But John Kerry remains the same.

A few months after he slimed his way into the Senate, Kerry flew to Nicaragua to meet with the ruling Communist thugs to try and sabotage aid to the resistance against their regime in the name of “peace”. The Sandinistas treated Kerry like a pathetic patsy, humiliating him by allying openly with the USSR right after their man in Washington D.C. had successfully pleaded their case to his colleagues.

Comandante was only the first of many dictators and terrorists to humiliate John Kerry. But Kerry has never resented any of his Communist or Islamist tormentors. You can set Kerry’s hair on fire and dunk his head in the toilet to put it out… and he will still come crawling back to take your side of things.

But there is one thing that Nantucket’s greatest windsurfer will not forgive or forget. Freedom.

For the worse part of five decades, Kerry has waged a vicious war against countries that have freedom on behalf of those that don’t. Nothing gets his goat like a civilized country, his own or any other, staving off a murderous band of thugs and terrorists. And no country has endured so well in that fight as Israel.

How George Soros Destroyed the Democratic Party The Left ultimately destroys itself. December 28, 2016 Daniel Greenfield

It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.

What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.

It was 2004. The poncho was the hottest fashion trend, there were 5 million new cases of AIDS and a former Nazi collaborator had bought the Democrat Party using the spare change in his sofa cushions.

And gone to war against the will of the people. This was what he modestly called his own “Soros Doctrine”.

“It is the central focus of my life,” George Soros declared. It was “a matter of life and death.” He vowed that he would become poor if it meant defeating the President of the United States.

Instead of going to the poorhouse, he threw in at least $15 million, all the spare change in the billionaire’s sofa cushions, dedicated to beating President Bush.

In his best lisping James Bond villain accent, Soros strode into the National Press Club and declared that he had “an important message to deliver to the American Public before the election” that was contained in a pamphlet and a book that he waved in front of the camera. Despite his “I expect you to die, Mr. Bond” voice, the international villain’s delivery was underwhelming. He couldn’t have sold brownies to potheads at four in the morning. He couldn’t even sell Bush-bashing to a roomful of left-wing reporters.

But he could certainly fund those who would. And that’s exactly what he did.

Money poured into the fringe organizations of the left like MoveOn, which had moved on from a petition site to a PAC. In 2004, Soros was its biggest donor. He didn’t manage to bring down Bush, but he helped buy the Democratic Party as a toy for his yowling dorm room of left-wing activists to play with.

Soros hasn’t had a great track record at buying presidential elections. The official $25 million he poured into this one bought him his worst defeat since 2004. But his money did transform the Democrat Party.

And killed it.

Obama’s “Shameful Betrayal” of Israel Netanyahu calls it right. Bruce Thornton

If any doubts remained about Obama’s malignant narcissism, historical ignorance, and geopolitical cretinism, the lame-duck-in-chief dispelled them with his abstention at the Security Council vote on a resolution slandering Israeli “settlements” as the foremost obstacle to peace. Undoing this despicable abandonment of a crucial ally should shoot to the top of incoming president Donald Trump’s to-do list.

Israeli intelligence has demonstrated that this diplomatic drive-by was orchestrated by Obama himself. “From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of what he rightly called a “shameful betrayal.” On the one hand, such back-door machinations are par for the course in the corrupt U.N. When the Bush administration in 2002 was trying to get a U.N. resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Germany lobbied non-permanent Security Council members Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Angola to vote against the resolution, which ultimately failed.

But German Chancellor Gerhard Schröeder had grubby political reasons for his meddling. He was running for reelection on a dismal economic record, and found a useful distraction by tapping into German anti-Americanism and reflexive pacifism. So too with France’s machinations and opposition to the war, which were aimed at ending the sanctions on Iraq so that France could get back to doing profitable business with Saddam Hussein, who in 1983 was buying half of all French arms exports.

These actions are bad enough, and are evidence that the U.N. exists to serve the interests of member countries, usually at the expense of other member countries. But Obama has no such utilitarian motives. He’s done with running for office. His reasons for betraying Israel comprise petty spite at Netanyahu for stoutly and publicly resisting Obama’s policies and actions that endanger his beleaguered country; and obeisance to left-wing historical fantasies about “colonialism,” the “two-state solution,” and Palestinian Arab “national aspirations.” In other words, the clichés one would expect from a badly educated university adjunct professor for whom left-wing bromides function as fashion statements and status assertion.

History, of course, tells a different story. There is no “Palestinian” people or “homeland.” There are Arabs whose historical homeland is the Arabian Peninsula. Any Arab living elsewhere is the descendant of invaders, colonizers, occupiers, and immigrants. There are no “occupied territories” or “borders,” but rather contested territories which are bounded by the 1967 armistice line, and the disposition of which will be decided through a negotiated settlement. The “West Bank” is a euphemism for the historical Jewish districts of Judea and Samaria. Jerusalem is not an Arab city, but for three thousand years has been the capital of the Jewish people, who have inhabited it continuously. The “settlements” are not colonial outposts created at the expense of their rightful owners, but towns and cities in the ancient Jewish homeland, most of them on land purchased from Arab landowners happy to make a profit on such barren tracts.

Nor is Israel an “illegitimate” country. Its existence is the result of international law as created by treaties, conferences, the League of Nations, and the U.N. resolution which established an Arab and a Jewish state, the latter comprising one-quarter of the territory mandated for Israel in the postwar settlement. Israel is as legitimate, and in fact even more legitimate, than the other states created in the region like Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, or the states like Hungary, Austria, the Kingdom of Serbs and Croats, and Czechoslovakia created after the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.