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January 2017

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

UNSETTLING IGNORANCE: 7 THINGS NPR DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL’S HISTORY

By on January 5th, 2017

An article posted on the National Public Radio website on December 29 by International Editor Greg Myre and Middle East Editor Larry Kaplow titled “7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements,” began as follows: “When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.”

The misleading nature of this one sentence is striking. The reason that no Jews – Israeli or otherwise – lived in the West Bank when Israel captured it in its defensive war against Jordan is that in 1947-48, Jordan killed or expelled all the Jews living there at the time.

The kibbutzim of the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem, for instance, came under attack in late 1947, and the women and children were evacuated. Later, in 1948, the men who stayed behind to defend their communities were either slaughtered or taken prisoner by Jordanian forces. As CAMERA has detailed before, Jordan also expelled all the Jewish residents when it illegally seized eastern Jerusalem. Yet, the authors of this piece – editors at NPR – saw fit to omit this essential information and thereby deceive readers.

The next few sentences of the piece are similarly deceptive, stating:

The following year, a small group of religious Jews rented rooms at the Park Hotel in Hebron for Passover, saying they wanted to be near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in Judaism (as well as Islam and Christianity).

The Israeli government reluctantly allowed them to stay “temporarily.” From that beginning, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews now reside in the West Bank, citing religion, history and Israel’s security among their reasons for being there.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Textbooks Used in UN West Bank Schools Erased Jewish History, Featured Maps Without Israel

By on January 5th, 2017

Textbooks used in United Nations-run schools in the West Bank did not include Israel in their maps or mention Jewish historical or cultural ties to the country, a recent study has found.

Professors Arnon Gross and Roni Shaked of the Harry Truman Research Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found that books, which are written by the Palestinian Ministry of Educatin and used in West Bank schools run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), display a single state of Palestine in the place of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority—effectively teaching students to recognize Israel as a nation. No Israeli city established after 1948 is listed on maps in the books.

In one of the textbooks, Zionism is described as a colonialist ideology devoted to moving European Jews to Israel and displacing Arabs. The textbooks also teach that Jewish holy places—including the Western Wall, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Rachel’s Tomb—are actually Muslim holy sites that Jews are appropriating. They claim that the 1929 riots, in which around 130 Jews were killed by Arab neighbors in Hebron, Jerusalem, and Safed, were part of the “al-Buraq revolt,” to prevent Jews from taking over religious sites in those areas.

In another instance, an image of a Mandatory-era stamp, which had writing in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, was reproduced with the Hebrew erased.

Palestinian textbooks have long been under scrutiny for their denial of Jewish history, incitement of violence, and failure to promote peaceful coexistence to Palestinian children. A similar report was issued in last June by the watchdog group IMPACT-SE, which found that the word “peace” did not appear at all in its survey of 78 Palestinian Authority textbooks for grades 1 through 12.

In The Palestinian Textbook Fiasco, which was published in the June 2013 issue of The Tower Magazine, Adi Schwartz dissected a State Department-sponsored study that whitewashed the extremism present in Palestinian textbooks.

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Ingrid Carlqvist Video: How Sweden Became Absurdistan.

By on January 5th, 2017

http://jamieglazov.com/2017/01/04/ingrid-carlqvist-moment-how-sweden-became-absurdistan/
This special edition of the Glazov Gang presents the Ingrid Carlqvist Moment hosted by Ingrid Carlqvist, journalist and author.

Ingrid discussed How Sweden Became Absurdistan, sharing her fear that her country could become the first Sharia state in Europe.

Don’t miss it!

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The Doctrine of Resistance by David Isaac

By on January 4th, 2017

The Obama administration is receiving a well-deserved hammering for orchestrating the UN’s fresh assault on Israel. Most refreshing is a good deal of that hammering is being delivered by an infuriated Israel, whose representatives haven’t flinched in slamming the U.S. for its betrayal. They are learning for the first time, or perhaps re-learning for the umpteenth time, a doctrine taught by Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky: the principle of resistance.

The Likud Party which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads purports to draw inspiration from Jabotinsky and to faithfully follow his teachings. Banners depicting Jabotinsky fly at every Likud event. Yet, in his many years in office, Netanyahu has seemed less a devotee of Jabotinsky than a disciple of Dale Carnegie, who famously said, “You can’t win an argument.” Netanyahu and his government haven’t won any arguments when it comes to Jewish rights in Israel’s heartland. Indeed, they haven’t tried. Instead, they’ve chosen to manage the problem. We see the fruits of that strategy: Resolution 2334.

Ironically, it was the Prime Minister’s father, Prof. Ben-Zion Netanyahu, who offered one of the best analyses of Jabotinsky’s thinking in a 1981 essay that was reprinted in his last book, The Founding Fathers of Zionism. Ben-Zion points out that Jabotinsky’s greatest contribution to Jewish thinking was this: “He taught the doctrine of resistance to a people who had not known what resistance meant for hundreds of years.”

What did this mean in political terms? “Vigorous resistance to any concession of any rightwhatsoever.” Ben-Zion Netanyahu writes: “After all, if you have a right, and concede that right, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, even if out of supposedly ‘pragmatic calculations,’ then what is taken away from you is, simply, theft. Hence, you have fundamentally surrendered to robbery, even if you pretend to having been magnanimous.”

Think of the prime minister’s approach in light of the above. When facing election, he speaks out against a two-state solution as he did in 2008 and in 2015. Afterwards, he hastily backs down under U.S. and international pressure, reaffirming his support for two states. Instead of vigorous resistance, Netanyahu chooses the path of least resistance.

Although describing himself as a disciple of Jabotinsky, Netanyahu acts more like Jabotinsky’s nemesis, Chaim Weizmann. The strategy of Weizmann and the Laborites was “a dunam and a cow, and then another dunam and another cow”––a dunam being an area of land (4 equaling 1 acre). The idea was to avoid tipping off the Arabs while creating facts on the ground that would make a Jewish state inevitable. Weizmann even denied he wanted a Jewish state. The strategy was disingenuous, fooled no one and cost the Jews dearly politically, as the British, who favored the Arabs from the start, gradually stripped away Jewish rights.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Trump’s Immigration Challenge To undo Obama’s catastrophic damage. Michael Cutler

By on January 4th, 2017

On January 20, 2017 President Trump can and likely will end all of Obama’s illegal immigration executive orders, but he needs to do more.

For decades the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws was hobbled by lack of resources in general and a particularly devastating failure to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

For decades the Border Patrol was perceived as the primary enforcement arm of America’s immigration laws and for the Border Patrol this worked out fine. They got the lion’s share of publicity and, far more importantly, the funding while INS special agents and the interior enforcement mission were all but ignored

When the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) was created in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, the former INS was dismantled and broken into several components of the DHS and mixed in with other agencies, principally the U.S. Customs Service.

Bad as it was for INS agents to operate in the shadow of the Border Patrol, the creation of the DHS was disastrous and caused many of the INS agents nostalgic for “the good old days.”

On May 5, 2005 the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, “New ‘Dual Mission’ Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.”

I was one of four witnesses who testified at that hearing. In point of fact, I testified at several hearings that sought to understand the challenges that the creation of the DHS created for the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

In my testimony I clearly articulated my concerns about the myriad issues created when the DHS was established and the former INS was dismantled.

Consider this excerpt from the testimony of then-Subcommittee Chairman John Hostettler in which he articulated the importance of immigration law enforcement and that was, however, hobbled by the creation of the DHS:

The first two Subcommittee hearings of the year examined in detail how the immigration enforcement agencies have inadequate resources and too few personnel to carry out their mission. The witnesses mentioned the lack of uniforms, badges, detention space, and the inevitable low morale of frontline agents who are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming illegal aliens. If this were not enough, these ”immigration enforcement” agencies also face internal confusion resulting from dual or multiple missions in which immigration has all too often taken a back seat. Sadly, contrary to Congress’ expectations, immigration enforcement has not been the primary focus of either of these agencies, and that is the subject of today’s hearing.

The Homeland Security Act, enacted in November 2002, split the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, into separate immigration service and enforcement agencies, both within the Department of Homeland Security. This split had been pursued by Chairman Sensenbrenner based on testimony and evidence that the dual missions of INS had resulted in poor performance.

There was a constant tug-of-war between providing good service to law-abiding aliens and enforcing the law against law-breakers. The plain language of the Homeland Security Act, Title D, creates a ”Bureau of Border Security,” and specifically transfers all immigration enforcement functions of INS into it. Yet when it came down to actually creating the two: new agencies, the Administration veered off course. Although the service functions of INS were transferred to USCIS, the enforcement side of INS was split in two, what is now Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to handle interior enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to guard our borders.

ICE was given all Customs agents, investigators, intelligence and analysis-from the Treasury Department, as well as the Federal Protective Service to guard Federal buildings, and the Federal Air Marshals to protect our airplanes, and finally the INS investigators.

CBP was given all Treasury Customs inspectors at the ports-of-entry, Agriculture Inspector from the Department Of Agriculture, and INS inspectors.

At no time during the reorganization planning was it anticipated by the Committee that an immigration enforcement agency would share its role with other enforcement functions, such as enforcement of our customs laws. This simply results in the creation of dual or multiple missions that the act sought to avoid in the first place.

Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by HSA has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS, and undermines the security of our Nation’s borders and citizens.

It is not certain on what basis it was determined that customs and agriculture enforcement should become part of the immigration enforcement agency, except to require Federal agents at the border to have more expertise and more functions.

It is also unknown on what basis the Federal Air Marshals should become part of this agency, especially since it has been revealed that the policy is not to apprehend out-of-immigration status aliens when discovered on flights. If the mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect the homeland, it cannot effect its mission by compromising or neglecting immigration enforcement for customs enforcement.

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Chicago Farewell A more dangerous nation is the president’s legacy. Lloyd Billingsley

By on January 4th, 2017

“On Tuesday, January 10,” President Obama said Monday in Hawaii, “I’ll go home to Chicago to say my grateful farewell to you, even if you can’t be there in person.” The president sees his remarks “as a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you’ve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.”

Since 2009, the president added, “we’ve faced our fair share of challenges, and come through them stronger. That’s because we have never let go of a belief that has guided us ever since our founding—our conviction that, together, we can change this country for the better.”

The president’s chosen venue of Chicago certainly isn’t much better. In 2016 a full 762 homicides took place in Chicago, up from 485 in 2015 and the biggest increase in 60 years. The 762 homicides, an increase of 57 percent, are more than New York and Los Angeles combined. In Chicago, shootings also jumped 46 percent to 3,550, and most of the victims lived in poor and minority neighborhoods. True to form, on this president’s watch, the entire nation has become a more dangerous place.

The president supports the Black Lives Matter narrative that racist cops are out to gun down African Americans. The president has hosted leaders of this hatemongering group, which celebrates the killing of police officers. In 2016, at least 64 law enforcement officers have been shot and killed, the most in five years. In July, Micah Xavier Johnson assassinated five police officers in Dallas, Texas.

President Obama wants to admit more Islamic refugees, whether or not they are sufficiently vetted, and this has made universities more dangerous. Last November Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Muslim refugee from Somalia, rammed his car into a building at Ohio State University then began stabbing people, injuring 13.

American nightclubs are also more dangerous, as Omar Mateen killed 50 people at the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history, but not the only one. In December of 2015, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down 14 innocents at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

As police learned, Farook and Malik had plans to attack schools and motorists on the freeway. In similar style, sporting events have also become a target-rich environment for terrorists. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombers were two Muslims from southern Russia, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar.

On President Obama’s watch, even U.S. military bases have become sites of terror attacks. At Ford Hood in 2009, self-described “Soldier of Allah” Nidal Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Nidal’s attack claimed twice as many casualties as the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The Fort Hood victims included private Francheska Velez, 21, pregnant and preparing to go home.

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Welcoming Castro’s Spies How Obama is exposing U.S. defense information to the world’s worst intelligence traffickers. Humberto Fontova

By on January 4th, 2017

The deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Defense Department by an enemy agent in modern history was pulled off by a spy working for the Castro regime.

Problem is, the mainstream media treasures their Havana bureaus. So they always strive to avoid any stories that might unduly upset the Stalinist apparatchiks who make these “news” (i.e. propaganda) bureaus possible.

“Cuba as tourist hot-spot!” “The magnanimity of the Castroites as health-care providers!” “The wickedness of the (so-called) U.S. embargo!” “Obama’s wisdom and courage in (unconstitutionally) loopholing the embargo half to death!” These themes pretty much sum up the MSM’s “reporting” on Cuba.

But in a rare hiccup of honesty (or an oversight) CNN itself admits to some very important Cuba-sponsored unpleasantness, about which most Americans remain ignorant. “The Most Dangerous U.S. Spy You’ve Never Heard of,” is how they titled a special (16 years after her arrest) on this Castro-sponsored spy named Ana Belen Montes.

In brief: the spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as “Castro’s Queen Jewel” in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and today she serves a 25-year sentence in Federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenbergs.

Significantly, Ana Belen Montes was arrested on September 21st 2001. That’s exactly ten days after Al Qaeda demolished the Twin Towers. By then she had been uncovered for a while, but, as is customary in such cases, was being monitored to see if her activities would reveal others within her spy network. That monitoring was scheduled to continue for much longer, but her access to U.S. intelligence secrets unrelated to Cuba (mid-east, for instance) demanded she be shut down—and quickly.

Interestingly, just days after the 9-11 terror attack, Castro’s KGB-founded and mentored intelligence mounted a major deception operation attempting to trip-up our investigation into the terrorist culprits:

“In the six months after the 9/11 attacks,” ran the Miami Herald investigative report, “up to 20 Cubans walked into U.S. embassies around the world and offered information on terrorism threats. Eventually, all were deemed to be Cuban intelligence agents and collaborators, purveying fabricated information. Two Cuba experts said spies sent by Cuba to the United States were part of a permanent intelligence program to mislead, misinform and identify U.S. spies.”

A Cuban spy named Gustavo Machin, who worked under diplomatic cover in Washington D.C. (and thus enjoyed “diplomatic immunity”) along with 14 of his KGB-trained Cuban colleagues, were all booted from the U.S. for serving as accomplices to super-spy Ana Belen Montes.

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Obama Administration Set for One Last Strike at Israel A Paris “peace conference” and a Turtle Bay aftermath. P. David Hornik

By on January 4th, 2017

A week and a half ago President Obama gave the order for the U.S. to abstain on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, thereby—effectively—voting in favor and allowing the resolution to pass.

As I noted, the resolution goes beyond “moral equivalency” by obfuscating Palestinian terror and incitement while branding Jewish life beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines a “flagrant violation under international law” and a “major obstacle…to peace.”

But the administration wasn’t through with Israel. A few days later, with the Middle East aflame from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Libya to Sudan and Iranian expansionism on the march, Secretary of State Kerry delivered a 75-minute harangue against what he called Israel’s “pernicious policy of settlement construction that is making peace impossible.”

Critics have noted that—in the real world—Israeli construction in settlements under the recent Netanyahu governments has been so modest that it has not affected the Israeli-Palestinian population balance in the West Bank; and that if any and all Israeli presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines is “illegal,” then the idea of a “peace process” to settle claims over disputed land appears to be invalidated, since Israel is then nothing but a rapacious thief and the Palestinians its victims seeking redress.

As international-law scholar Eugene Kontorovich notes in the Washington Post:

The…condemnation of any Jewish presence whatsoever in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank is a unique rule invented for Israel. There has never been a prolonged belligerent occupation—from the U.S. occupation of West Berlin to Turkey’s ongoing occupation of Cyprus to Russia’s of Crimea—where the occupying power has blocked its citizens from living in the territory under its control. Moreover, neither the United Nations nor any other international body has ever suggested they must do so. What is being demanded of Israel in its historical homeland has never been demanded of any other state, and never will be.

The Obama administration’s stepped-up diplomatic and verbal assault on Israel in the last weeks of its tenure has not gone unnoticed, sparking bitter criticism even from Democratic lawmakers and mainstream American Jewish organizations that are far from any right-wing agenda.

But the extent to which the administration listens to such protests, or can be budged from its wholesale endorsement of Palestinian claims regarding the West Bank and Jerusalem, can be gauged from the fact that the Obama-Kerry team has still more in store for Israel.

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The U.S. should stop opposing Israeli settlements and start diminishing Iranian power and Arab terrorism. By Mario Loyola see note please

By on January 4th, 2017

Some very good points…but same old, same old crapola about a two state dissolution…..an idee fixe that is ahistorical and delusional….rsk

President Obama’s decision to stab Israel in the back at the United Nations could prove to be a blessing in disguise. Obama’s instinct for radical overreach has achieved a reductio ad absurdum of the whole U.S. framework toward the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and made it far more difficult for President-elect Trump to embrace that framework without wholesale revision. And that could give us something we don’t have now: a realistic path to peace in Palestine.

Current U.S. policy toward the Israeli–Palestinian conflict evolved in support of a goal — the two-state solution — set by President Bill Clinton and formally embraced by President George W. Bush. This goal has become completely disconnected from reality. That is not to say that a two-state solution is not the right ultimate goal; maybe it is. But given the circumstances of today’s Middle East, a negotiated settlement leading to a two-state solution is simply impossible. The combination of Israel’s international isolation, Palestinians’ steadfast commitment to incitement and terrorism, and Iranian ascendancy to regional hegemony and nuclear weapons means that Israel simply can’t risk the concessions that would be necessary for a final settlement of the conflict.

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the territory immediately became a terrorist safe haven and a platform for missile-fired terrorism. If the same thing happens in the West Bank, which straddles Jerusalem on three sides and abuts most of Israel’s population, it will be the end of Israel. A two-state solution under current circumstances would be suicide. Peace in Palestine requires new circumstances. And the object of U.S. policy should be to create them. Hence, every element of U.S. policy, including the U.S. position on Israeli settlements, should be justifiable as part of a coherent and realistic strategy for getting from here to there.

That includes the U.S. position on Israeli settlements. Settlements are not the reason that the two-state solution is “now in jeopardy,” as Secretary of State John Kerry put it in his mea non culpa speech last week. There is only one reason the two-state solution is in jeopardy, or more accurately dead, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews. There is only one reason for the harsh security measures imposed in the occupied territories, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews. There is only one reason for the continuing conflict between Israel and its neighbors, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews.

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Obama’s Last-Minute Legacy-Padding on Foreign Policy The president is pleasing many on the left as he prepares for retirement, but his actions may empower those he hates most. By Jonah Goldberg

By on January 4th, 2017

Of all Barack Obama’s costumes, the most ill-fitting is that of the hawk. The guise doesn’t work for all sorts of ideological and historical reasons. Plus there’s the fact that he’s rushing to put on the outfit as he’s heading out the door.

The new sanctions against Russia are fine with me on the merits, even if they are remarkably tardy and being sold in no small part for domestic, political reasons.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been undermining American interests for a long time now. From the annexation of Crimea and a shadow war in Ukraine to his unabashed support for the butcher Bashar Assad in Syria, Putin has given the Obama administration every excuse to punch back. But until last week, Obama’s response had been to offer various and sundry diplomatic “off-ramps” and a little bit of tongue-lashing. General dovishness combined with the single-minded pursuit of a deal with Iran led Obama to insist that we should avoid “provoking” Russia.

The satirist who goes by the moniker “Iowahawk” cut to the chase on Twitter:

Russia invades Crimea: oh well

Russia shoots down airliner: mistakes happen

John Podesta falls for phishing scam: RESTART THE COLD WAR

Obama’s volte-face should be seen in the larger context of his last-minute legacy-padding and his widely alleged desire to “box in” his successor. The president is preparing to spend the next few decades as a celebrity in liberal circles.

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