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November 2017

Palestinians: If You Do Not Give Us Everything, We Cannot Trust You by Bassam Tawil

The Palestinians have made up their mind: The Trump peace plan is bad for us and we will not accept it. The plan is bad because it does not force Israel to give the Palestinians everything.

If and when the Trump administration makes public its peace plan, the Palestinians will be the first to reject it, simply because it does not meet all their demands.

Trump will soon learn that for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians, 99% is just not enough.

The Palestinians are once again angry — this time because the Trump administration does not seem to have endorsed their position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are also angry because they believe that the Trump administration does not want to force Israel to comply with all their demands.

Here is how the Palestinians see it: If you are not with us, then you must be against us. If you do not accept all our demands, then you must be our enemy and we cannot trust you to play the role of an “honest” broker in the conflict with Israel.

Last week, unconfirmed reports once again suggested that the Trump administration has been working on a comprehensive plan for peace in the Middle East. The full details of the plan remain unknown at this time.

However, what is certain — according to the reports — is that the plan does not meet all of the Palestinians’ demands. In fact, no peace plan — by Americans or any other party — would be able to provide the Palestinians with everything for which they are asking.

Palestinian requirements remain as unrealistic as ever. They include, among other things, the demand that millions of Palestinian “refugees” be allowed to enter Israel. Also, the Palestinians want Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders that would bring Hamas and other groups closer to Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader, 82-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now in the twelfth year of his four-year term, continue to insist that they will accept nothing less than a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on the entire lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Most dangerous is that even in the unlikely event that Abbas would sign some deal, another leader can come along later and legitimately say that Abbas had no authority to sign anything as his term had long since expired.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group controlling the Gaza Strip, maintains that it will never accept the presence of Israel on “Muslim-owned” land. Hamas wants all the land Israel supposedly “took” in 1948. Translation: Hamas wants the destruction of Israel in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate where non-Muslims would be granted the status of dhimmi (“protected person”).

Why Do These Wars Never End? Weaker enemies, by design, do not threaten stronger powers existentially; ‘proportionality’ means stalemate. By Victor Davis Hanson

From the Punic Wars (264–146 b.c.) and the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) to the Arab–Israeli wars (1947–) and the so-called War on Terror (2001–), some wars never seem to end.

The dilemma is raised frequently given America’s long wars (Vietnam 1955–75) that either ended badly (Iraq 2003–11) or in some ways never quite ended at all (Korea 1950–53 and 2017–?; Afghanistan 2001–).

So what prevents strategic resolution? Among many reasons, two throughout history stand out.

One, such bella interrupta involve belligerents who are roughly equally matched. Neither side had enough of a material or spiritual edge (or sometimes the desire) to defeat, humiliate, and dictate terms to the beaten enemy. Think Rome and Carthage from 264 to 146. For 118 years, they fought three Punic Wars until greater Roman growth and vitality finally allowed it to dominate the Mediterranean and dictate terms on the North African coast, which finally resulted in the destruction of the Carthaginian Empire rather than another defeat of it. There was no fourth Punic War.

Certainly over the length of the Hundred Years’ War, England and France were often either too equally matched, or both lacked the necessary military clout to destroy their adversary’s army, march on the respective enemy capital, occupy it, and end both the material and political ability of the losing side to make war.

In contrast, there was not another American Civil War, because after the invasions of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan between 1864 and 1865, the Confederacy lost the ability to resist, and Union armies forced an unconditional surrender and a mandated reentry into the Union. The same sort of resolution was true of the Second World War, in which the victorious Allies agreed that they should and could destroy the political regimes — at whatever cost — of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The combined manpower, GDP, and munitions of Britain, the USSR, and the United States allowed them to crush the Axis — once they had the willingness to pay a high price in blood and treasure to avoid a World War I–like armistice that they believed would have led to World War III.

In the post-war nuclear age, America’s enemies having roughly equal military power was never the reason that America failed to achieve victory in conventional wars. Rather, for a variety of reasons — political, cultural, social, economic — the U.S., at times, both wisely and foolishly, chose not to apply its full strength to pursue the unconditional surrender of its enemies.

Holding the PLO Accountable Caroline Glick

The PLO’s campaign to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the US recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on US soil.

Is the PLO’s long vacation from accountability coming to an end? How about the State Department’s? In 1987 the US State Department placed the PLO on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The PLO was removed from the list in 1994, following the initiation of its peace process with Israel in 1993.

As part of the Clinton administration’s efforts to conclude a long-term peace deal between the PLO and Israel, in 1994 then president Bill Clinton signed an executive order waiving enforcement of laws that barred the PLO and its front groups from operating in the US. His move enabled the PLO to open a mission in Washington.In 2010, then president Barack Obama upgraded the mission’s status to the level of “Delegation General.” The move was seen as a signal that the Obama administration supported moves by the PLO to initiate recognition of the “State of Palestine” by European governments and international bodies.

Whereas Obama’s PLO upgrade was legally dubious, the PLO’s campaign to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the US recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on US soil.

The operation of the PLO’s missions in the US was contingent on periodic certification by the secretary of state that the PLO was not engaged in terrorism, including incitement of terrorism, was not encouraging the boycott of Israel and was not seeking to bypass its bilateral negotiations with Israel in order to achieve either diplomatic recognition or statehood. Under Obama, the State Department refused to acknowledge the PLO’s breach of all the conditions of US recognition.

The Lie That Reelected Obama Al-Qaeda was not “on the run” while POTUS 44 was in office. Matthew Vadum

The previous administration deliberately understated al-Qaeda’s strength in 2012 so President Obama’s worse-than-useless counter-terrorism policy would seem like it was actually working, clearing the way for his easy reelection victory over Republican Mitt Romney, according to new evidence.

Intelligence was just one of the many areas of government activity relentlessly politicized by the Obama administration. In the Obama era, the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Education, to name only a few of the affected federal agencies, were also infested with determined radical ideologues bent on fundamentally transforming American society. Many of the left-wing extremists are still in positions of authority in the government as they undermine President Trump’s policies and directives every day.

For conservatives and other patriots, proof Obama twisted the facts about al-Qaeda for his own gain is yet another painful reminder of the Left’s virtually unchallenged mastery of the art of story-telling, even when, as in this instance, the story is a complete and utter lie, one of many propagated by Team Obama. Led by creative writer and Obama aide Ben Rhodes, left-wingers also managed to trick reporters and others into disseminating dangerous falsehoods about the laughably weak, unenforceable nuclear nonproliferation deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rhodes is also credited with writing Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech, a piece of public relations outreach intended to flatter Muslims.

And it turns out the picture Obama’s people painted of Osama bin Laden, who was dispatched to the hereafter by U.S. Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011, was completely wrong. In the lead-up to his death, bin Laden wasn’t some out-of-touch, semi-retired, has-been figurehead in al-Qaeda, the Muslim terrorist group that engineered the 9/11 attacks. From his nondescript compound in jihadist-friendly Pakistan, he was in fact minutely involved in day-to-day operations and planning for al-Qaeda, as thousands of documents recently released by the Trump administration show. The U.S. military seized the material from bin Laden’s home.

It was New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi who spilled the beans Friday at an event at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), putting into context the 17 cherry-picked documents the Obama administration made public in May 2012 in an effort to downplay the continuing significance of al-Qaeda.

Never Mind ‘Trumpism’: What is ‘Deplorablism’? By Victor Davis Hanson

There is lots of talk about a new nationalist populist worker movement.https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/20/never-mind-trumpism-what-is-deplorablism/

Supposedly, something quite new would institutionalize, define, and solidify the Trump base of aging Reagan Democrats, old Ross Perot independents, Tea Party remnants, newly disaffected Democratic workers, and a few returning libertarians and paleocons. Certainly, together they helped to swung the election in 2016.

But what exactly would be the formal agenda of the proverbial deplorables and irredeemables? And how would it differ all that much from conservative Republicanism of generations past?

After all, despite a much-hyped conservative civil war, a bitter primary, and a NeverTrump movement that won’t quiet, 90 percent of the Republicans in 2016 still voted for Trump. These voters assumed, like deplorable and irredeemable Democrats and Independents, that Trump would push conservative agendas. And they were largely proved correct.

After 10 months of governance, Trump’s deregulations, a foreign policy of principled realism, energy agendas, judicial appointments, efforts at tax reform and health care recalibration, cabinet appointments, and reformulation at the Departments of Education, the EPA, and Interior seem so far conservative to the core.

Illegal Immigration, Trade, and Realism
In the few areas where Trump conceivably differed from his 16 primary Republican rivals—immigration, trade, and foreign policy—the 20th-century Republican/conservative orthodoxy was actually closer to Trump’s positions than to those of recent Republican nominees, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

Vast majorities of conservatives always favored enforcement of federal immigration law rather than tolerance of sanctuary cities. They wanted to preserve legal, meritocratic, diverse, and measured immigration, not sanction open borders. And they championed the melting pot over the identity politics of the salad bowl.

In sum, voters did not believe the United States could continue with open borders, or the idea that foreign nationals could cross the border illegally and at will, and then dictate to their hosts the circumstances of their continued residence—much less accuse their magnanimous hosts of racism and nativism for not accepting the demands of their advocates.

All Trump did was return prior orthodoxy on border enforcement to the fore, albeit often with blunter rhetoric. He called out a loud but minority corporate interest on the Right that wanted cheap labor. And he questioned the wisdom of Republican officials who apparently saw appeasement of illegal immigration as a way to compete for the eventual votes of inevitable and huge annual influxes of illegal aliens.

Review: A Bounty of Troublemakers While mutineers succumbed to half-clad Tahitians, Capt. Bligh performed a navigational feat—and convicts began populating Australia. A. Roger Ekirch reviews ‘Paradise in Chains’ by Diana Preston. By A. Roger Ekirch

Historians and novelists, no less than Hollywood producers, have long been drawn to the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, notwithstanding its dubious historical importance. For compared with British naval mutinies in the 1790s—at Spithead and at Nore, both off England’s coast, and aboard the Hermione in the West Indies—the rumpus on the Bounty was a tame affair. No lives were lost. The mutiny did not erupt in wartime or endanger the homeland. Nor did it lead to naval reforms.

Yet the tale of the Bounty, set against the backdrop of the South Pacific, in time became romanticized, at the expense of the “tyrannical” captain, William Bligh, and to the advantage of young Fletcher Christian, a target of his ire, who as a petty officer led the uprising. It is well known that many of the crew, including Christian, had by then succumbed to the amorous appeal of half-clad Tahitians. Less emphasized in most accounts was Bligh’s epic feat of seamanship upon being cast adrift after the mutiny: navigating a cramped launch with 18 loyal sailors before finding a safe harbor in the Dutch East Indies. In 48 days, they had traveled more than 3,600 nautical miles.

The author of 10 earlier books on such disparate topics as Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Boxer Rebellion, the historian Diana Preston revisits the mutiny in “Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia.” Grounded in a familiar assortment of printed manuscripts and secondary sources, the book is comprehensive in scope, cogently written and amply detailed. In addition to the Bounty’s factious crew, we encounter an intriguing cast of indigenous personalities, including the Tahitian queen Purea, who years before the Bounty’s mutineers came to her island had seduced the famous naturalist Sir Joseph Banks.

Yet for the most part “Paradise in Chains” offers neither new insights nor fresh information. Ms. Preston acknowledges Bligh’s navigational skill and bravery, but she blames his short temper and narcissism for triggering the mutiny, giving insufficient weight to Caroline Alexander’s painstaking evidence, presented in “The Bounty” (2003), of a concerted campaign in England to tar Bligh’s reputation by the prominent families of Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood, a fellow mutineer. Not to be minimized, in addition to Christian’s inflated sense of entitlement, was the reluctance of some crewmen to return home once they had seen Tahiti.

The Hague Aims for U.S. Soldiers A ‘war crimes’ inquiry in Afghanistan shows the danger of the International Criminal Court.By John Bolton

For the first time since it began operating in 2002, the International Criminal Court has put the U.S. in its sights. On Nov. 3, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda initiated an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan since mid-2003. This raises the alarming possibility that the court will seek to assert jurisdiction over American citizens.

Located in The Hague (alongside such dinosaurs as the International Court of Justice, which decides state-versus-state disputes), the ICC constitutes a direct assault on the concept of national sovereignty, especially that of constitutional, representative governments like the United States. The Trump administration should not respond to Ms. Bensouda in any way that acknowledges the ICC’s legitimacy. Even merely contesting its jurisdiction risks drawing the U.S. deeper into the quicksand.

The left will try to intimidate the White House by insisting that any resistance to the ICC aligns the U.S. with human-rights violators. But the administration’s real alignment should be with the U.S. Constitution, not the global elite. It would not be “pragmatic” to accept the ICC; it would be toxic to democratic sovereignty.

The U.S. is not party to the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC’s authority. Bill Clinton signed it in 2000, when he was a lame duck. But fearing certain rejection, he did not submit it to the Senate. The Bush administration formally “unsigned” in 2002 before the Rome Statute entered into force. That same year, Congress passed supportive legislation protecting U.S. servicemembers from the ICC, a law that was decried by hysterical opponents as the “Hague Invasion Act.” The U.S. then entered into more than 100 bilateral agreements committing other nations not to deliver Americans into the ICC’s custody.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice later weakened America’s opposition to the ICC. Barack Obama manifestly longed to join but nonetheless did not re-sign the Rome Statute. Thus the U.S. has never acknowledged the ICC’s jurisdiction, and it should not start now. America’s long-term security depends on refusing to recognize an iota of legitimacy in this brazen effort to subordinate democratic nations to the unaccountable melding of executive and judicial authority in the ICC.

Proponents of global governance have always wanted to turn the U.S. into just another pliant “member” of the United Nations General Assembly or the ICC. They know that America’s exceptionalism and commitment to its Constitution were among their biggest obstacles, but they hoped to cajole Washington into joining one day. The new Afghanistan investigation demonstrates why that vision needs to be confronted now and conclusively defeated.

Sexual Harassment––Puhleeze! Joan Swirsky

I have a vivid memory of putting on my mother’s high heels and covering my head with the veiled hat she wore on special occasions. All decked out, I made my way up The Boulevard in New Haven to our neighbor’s home about four houses away.

And on that sojourn, I have an equally vivid memory of a man sitting on his porch and stopping me in my tracks with his comments. “Well well well, Missy, don’t we look pretty! And where would you be going today looking so beautiful?”

It was a single moment in time, but in that instant, I knew that it felt very good to be noticed and called attractive.

Where was leftist lawyer Gloria Allred all those years ago to represent me and accuse Mr. Porch Guy of sexual suggestiveness, intimidation, even harassment?

She was nowhere because even as a little girl I knew the following:

I dressed up fancily precisely so people would notice.
I enjoyed the fact that people––in this case, Mr. Porch Guy––noticed.
I continued all my life––and to this day––to attend to my appearance because the feedback (from both women and men) is so affirmative and so sweet.

Of course, that puts me in the same category as the multimillions of people around the world who spend multibillions of dollars on cosmetics and clothing and hair and nail care for exactly the same reason––to appear attractive and by doing so to inspire people to smile at them, accept them, hire them, promote them, flirt with them, or approach them with romantic interest.

It’s called human nature. It’s hard-wired into our DNA. And it’s been going on since the Garden of Eden when I’m sure Eve squeezed berry juice on their cheeks and lips and Adam bedecked himself with that famous fig leaf.

Veteran Broadcaster Charlie Rose Suspended After Sexual-Harassment Allegations CBS suspends Mr. Rose while PBS and Bloomberg suspend distribution of his show By Maria Armental

Longtime television journalist Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS and his trademark interview show pulled from PBS and Bloomberg following allegations published by The Washington Post that he sexually harassed several women.

Mr. Rose, 75 years old and best known for longform interviews, is the executive editor and host of “Charlie Rose,” which has appeared nightly on Public Broadcasting Service stations and in prime time on Bloomberg Television. He also co-hosts the CBS Corp. morning show “CBS This Morning” and is a contributing correspondent to CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

PBS and Bloomberg LP said Monday they were suspending distribution of the “Charlie Rose” show in light of the allegations. CBS said Mr. Rose was suspended while the company looked into the matter.

The Post said the women either worked or aspired to work for Mr. Rose at the “Charlie Rose” show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011.

“I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior,” Mr. Rose said in a statement posted on his Twitter account. “I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”

Companies across industries are reassessing policies following a wave of allegations of workplace sexual misconduct, including accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has apologized for his past behavior with colleagues but denied allegations of nonconsensual sex.

Rutgers President Defends ‘Academic Freedom’ of Three Professors Blasted for Comments on Israel, Jews by Shiri Moshe

The president of Rutgers University in New Jersey defended the free speech rights of three faculty members who have recently come under intense criticism for their comments on Israel and Jews.https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/20/rutgers-president-defends-academic-freedom-of-three-professors-blasted-for-comments-on-israel-jews/

Speaking in a town hall sponsored by the Rutgers student government on Thursday, President Robert Barchi noted ongoing media attention focused on Michael Chikindas, a microbiology professor who published multiple antisemitic, homophobic and misogynistic social media posts; Jasbir Puar, a women’s studies professor whose latest book accuses Israel of injuring Palestinians “in order to control them”; and Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor of international law who accused Israeli officials of trafficking children’s organs while serving as a spokesperson for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Barchi began his address by illustrating the difference between free speech and harassment, noting that placing “a swastika on the side of a building on campus” would not be a violation of the First Amendment, even if it might breach university policies against vandalism.

His argument drew an objection from a woman in the crowd, who said to applause, “it is not free speech.”