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January 2019

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Analysis: Who will replace aging Abbas?Abbas’s deteriorating health has triggered speculations that the era of Mahmoud Abbas is ending. By Daniel Krygier

By on January 6th, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/analysis-who-will-replace-aging-abbas/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1546800310&pushcrew_powered=1

The 83-year-old and ailing Mahmoud Abbas has been heading the Palestine Liberation Organization since Arafat passed away in 2004. Now it’s Abbas’s deteriorating health that has triggered speculations about his replacement.

While Ramallah officially claims business as usual, there is intense rivalry among possible claimants to the PA’s throne, as Abbas suffers from heart problems, prostate cancer and has been hospitalized several times. He’s a heavy smoker to boot.

Who are the potential successors?

One of the main candidates to emerge is Saeb Erekat. Based in Jericho, PLO official Erekat served for many years as a chief negotiator in negotiations with Israel. While officially advocating the two-state solution, Erekat embraces anti-Jewish historical revisionism and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

Erekat makes the ridiculous claim that his family lived in Israel for 10.000 years. In reality, Erekat’s family immigrated to Israel approximately 100 years ago from the area that is now Saudi Arabia.

Erekat also created headlines by telling Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. to “shut up” when she criticized Ramallah for undermining peace with Israel. Part of the inner Abbas circle, Erekat is actually considered more extreme than the current PA leader.

Another potential successor is senior Fatah official Mahmoud al-Aloul. During the First Lebanon War in the 1980s, al-Aloul participated in terrorism against the Jewish state. During the Second Intifada, his oldest son Jihad was killed in clashes with IDF soldiers.

Mahmoud al-Aloul is said to share the political outlook of Mahmoud Abbas. Like Abbas, he rejects Washington as a peace mediator and advocates a boycott of Israeli goods.

Majid Faraj is another possible successor. Faraj is the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service. He enjoys American and Israeli support. But this puts Faraj at risk of being branded a “collaborator,” diminishing his chances of replacing Abbas.

Mohammed Dahlan stands out among the contenders struggling to replace Abbas in that his main power base is not in Ramallah, but the Gaza Strip, where he enjoys close relations with the Hamas regime. He is therefore not popular with the PA and less likely to take over after Abbas.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Mitch McConnell’s Complicity with Democrats By Rachel Bovard

By on January 6th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/05/mitch-mcconnells-complicity

The partial government shutdown is well into its second week. And given the mix of Democrat enthusiasm and complete Republican apathy, it looks like it may stay that way for a while.

Ask any reporter or Capitol Hill staffer who has worked through previous government shutdowns, and we’ll all tell you the same thing about this one: it’s bizarre.

Government shutdowns are generally characterized by a pervasive sense of urgency and frazzled, frantic negotiations. Beleaguered members tramp back and forth to the White House and hold daily press conferences, both chambers hold late-night sessions for votes and speeches, and, of course, everyone howls on cable news. But, minus a few exceptions on the cable news networks, hardly any of this has occurred.

Instead, the clock chimed on the shutdown and Congress just went home. The Republican House, in a last-minute Hail Mary, passed a government funding bill that included the president’s requested $5 billion in wall funding. But upon receiving it, the Republican Senate collectively yawned and packed up for home on December 21. They didn’t come back until 4 p.m. on January 2.

They weren’t alone. Newly minted Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) decamped for Hawaii, for which she received approximately zero criticism in the press. The new junior senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, apparently spent the break crafting a sanctimonious missive against the administration he previously sought to join. And nary a peep was heard from anyone else in congressional leadership, Republican or Democrat.

Backward Priorities
President Trump, meanwhile, remained in Washington, practically begging for a negotiating partner. Or, at the very least, a sparring partner.

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Ocasio-Cortez Fans Joke About Assassinating Steve Scalise By Tyler O’Neil

By on January 6th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ocasio-cortez-fans-joke-about-assassinating-steve-scalise/

On Saturday, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-S.C.), the House minority whip, responded to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who had advocated for a 70 percent top tax rate. When Ocasio-Cortez shot back, her supporters joked about assassinating Scalise, who nearly lost his life in the 2017 congressional baseball game shooting.

“Snipe his a**!” the popular satirical account Raandy tweeted, responding to Ocasio-Cortez. His tweet received 582 “likes” and 7 “retweets.”

Another chimed in, “she’s got better aim than James Hodgkinson, that’s for sure.” This tweet received 25 “likes.”

she’s got better aim than James Hodgkinson, that’s for sure
— matt’s making medium missives on mobile (@averybigbear) January 6, 2019

James Hodgkinson was the shooter who nearly killed Scalise in 2017. The congressman almost lost his life multiple times during and after the shooting.

“Raandy” is a satirical account that played a hoax on conservatives during the 2016 election by claiming to be a post office worker and ironically confessing to “ripping up absentee ballots that vote for Trump.” His tweet is clearly a joke, but the 2017 shooting is no laughing matter. Any of the 582 people who “liked” this message on Twitter might be inspired to actually carry out what Raandy so glibly jokes about.

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A Tale of Two Immigrants By Deroy Murdock

By on January 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/a-tale-of-two-immigrants/
The murder of police corporal Ronil Singh highlights the deadly consequences of Democrats’ border-weakening and ‘sanctuary’ policies.

‘He’s not coming back,” said Reggie Singh.

The inconsolable brother of the late Newman, Calif., police officer Ronil Singh told journalists last week, “There’s a lot of people out there that misses him.”

Corporal Singh is gone for good because Gustavo Perez Arriaga shot him dead, officials say. This small-town case has national repercussions. This tale of two immigrants finds Singh and Arriaga as the apotheoses of how Republicans and Democrats respectively see immigration.

Singh, 33, was a model immigrant. He came to America from Fiji — legally. He reportedly drove a four-hour round trip to attend Yuba City’s police academy. He took speech classes to smooth his heavily accented English, his third language. He became a public servant and spent seven-and-a-half years as a cop.

“He came to America to become a police officer,” Newman police chief Randy Richardson said. “That’s all he wanted to do.” On Facebook, Ugesh Yogi Singh, Ronil’s uncle, called him “my adventurous nephew” and “my family’s Action Hero.”

President Donald J. Trump sent every member of Congress the slides from the security update that Pelosi and Schumer ignored. According to that presentation, Customs and Border Protection seized 850 tons of narcotics and arrested 17,000 adults with existing criminal records in fiscal year 2018, blocked 3,755 known or suspected terrorists from entering the country in FY 2017, and apprehended 6,000 gang members. How much of these substances and how many of these dangerous individuals eluded federal officials? Who knows?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France in Free Fall by Guy Millière

By on January 6th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13500/france-in-free-fall

French officials evidently understand that the terrorists are engaged in a long war and that it will be difficult to stop them; so they seem to have given in. These officials are no doubt aware that young French Muslims are being radicalized in increasing numbers. The response, however, has been to strengthen Muslim institutions in France.

At the time President Macron was speaking, one of his emissaries was in Morocco to sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which defines immigration as “beneficial” for the host countries. Under it, signatory states pledge to “strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems.”

A group of retired generals published an open letter, saying that signing the Global Compact was a further step towards “the abandonment of national sovereignty” and noted that “80% of the French population think that immigration must be halted or regulated drastically”.

The author Éric Zemmour described the “yellow vests” revolt as the result of the “despair of people who feel humiliated, forgotten, dispossessed of their own country by the decisions of a contemptuous caste”.

Strasbourg, France. Christmas market. December 11th, 8pm. A man shouting, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) shoots at passersby, then wounds several with a knife. He murders three people on the spot and wounds a dozen others, some severely. Two will later die of their wounds. The murderer escapes. Two days later, the police shoot him dead.

He was known to the police. When members of the General Directorate of Internal Security and some gendarmes came to his home a few hours earlier, he had escaped. Although they knew he was an armed and dangerous Islamist ready to act, and that Christmas markets had been, and could be, likely targets, no surveillance was in place.

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Iran’s Schizophrenia Heats Up the Debate by Amir Taheri

By on January 6th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13499/iran-schizophrenia

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The political schizophrenia gives the impression that one is dealing with two Irans: one Iran as a state and another as a revolution. The good news is that, perhaps out of necessity, a new political culture is taking shape inside Iran, one that instinctively links politics to concrete issues of real life rather than abstract notions linked to revolutionary utopias.

What millions of Iranians demand is a restoration of the authority of their state which, in turn, requires, the closure of the revolutionary chapter.

As the leadership in Tehran prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution, a growing number of Iranians are wondering whether the time has come for their country to close that chapter and resume its historic path as a nation-state.

The need for Iran to move beyond the Khomeinist revolution was the theme of a seminar last month at Westminster University in London where the return of Iran as a nation-state was highlighted as an urgent need for regional peace and stability.

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The main reason for this is that the Khomeinist revolution failed to create a new state structure with credible and efficient institutions. Unable to destroy the Iranian state as it had developed over some five centuries, the new Khomeinist rulers tried to duplicate it by creating parallel organs for exercising power.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum The prison party’s over for Hamas and Fatah The fact that terrorists have been treated to cushier conditions than other incarcerated criminals is beyond scandalous.

By on January 6th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-prison-partys-over-for-hamas-and-fatah/

At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced that the “party was over” for Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons.

It may be hard to believe that 6,000 Hamas and Fatah killers and handlers are living it up behind bars, particularly since they go on periodical hunger strikes to obtain better conditions. But Erdan’s list of new restrictions should put to rest any skepticism on that score.

The main bombshell he dropped on the failed suicide-bombers and successful stabbers who didn’t make it to Allah’s paradise was that they would stop being grouped in cell blocks according to their terrorist-organization affiliations.

“There will no longer be separate Hamas and Fatah wards,” he said, explaining that the current situation enables each group to become even more radicalized, to use their power against wardens and to make Israeli intelligence-gathering on their organizations’ activities extremely difficult.

Another terrorist prisoner benefit that is going to be revoked, according to Erdan, involves the flow of money that the prisoners receive from outside sources, such as the Palestinian Authority, which pays stipends to terrorists and their families from a “Martyrs’ Fund.” Today, each prisoner is allowed to receive up to NIS 1,600 (about $430) per month. What the prisoners have been doing is pooling the cash, and collectively purchasing groceries and other equipment with which to prepare their own meals, rather than eat the food provided by the Israel Prison Service (IPS).

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