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October 2024

Democratic senators demand sanctions against ‘settlement’ group By David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/democratic-senators-demand-sanctions-against-settlement-group/

Three U.S. Democratic senators have urged further sanctions against “extremist settlers” and their supporters, singling out in particular the Amana (“Covenant”) organization, which works to develop Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

“We cannot allow a reckless and dangerous minority to continue to endanger Israelis and Palestinians alike through theft, arson, intimidation, violence, and worse,” the senators wrote in a Sept. 27 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

“Targeted sanctions have long been a valuable tool in holding violent extremists accountable for their actions and creating space for peaceful and more rational actors to work,” they added.

The signatories are Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The senators expressed strong support for the Biden administration’s earlier sanctions against Israeli individuals and groups, such as the Lehava and Tzav 9 organizations.

“Amana has a long and well-documented history of supporting extremist settlers who expropriate Palestinian land and threaten Palestinian landholders, farmers, and shepherds. Amana has played a central role in forming and sustaining hill-top outposts illegal under Israeli law, often by granting loans to bankroll their start,” they wrote.

Were the United States to sanction Amana it would join Canada, which imposed sanctions on the group in June under its Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations.

Amana, the settlement movement of Gush Emunim, was established in 1976, becoming a registered association in 1978, to help develop communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Galilee, Negev and Gush Katif (a settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip evacuated in 2005).

Israel’s war on Hezbollah enhances US national/homeland security Yoram Ettinger

 bit.ly/4drgASa

Israel’s war on Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi terrorists – and their patron, Iran’s Ayatollahs – highlights Israel’s unique role as a force multiplier for the US.  It sheds light on the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street of US-Israel cooperation, which yields to the US taxpayer more than US foreign aid to Israel.
For example:

*Israel fights Hezbollah, which is a global epicenter – second only to Iran’s Ayatollahs – of anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering, extending from the Middle East to the American continent. As a proxy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, Hezbollah has proliferated terrorist cells in the US – “the Great American Satan” – and has carried out terror assaults on US installations in the Middle East and beyond. Moreover, since the early 1980s, Hezbollah has collaborated with drug cartels in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil; has trained Latin American terrorists (on their way to the US) in the tri-border areas of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil and Chile-Peru-Bolivia; has conducted a mega-billion-dollar money laundering operation between Latin America, West Africa, Europe and the Middle East; has terrorized pro-US regimes in western, northern and eastern Africa; and has systematically attempted to topple all pro-US “apostate” Sunni Arab regimes, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco. Hezbollah and Iran’s Ayatollahs have targeted Israel as the vanguard of the US, and the US’ first line of defense, in the “abode of Islam.”

THE UN CHIEF’S FOUL LANGUAGE-RUTHIE BLUM

https://www.jns.org/the-un-chiefs-foul-language/

It’s one thing for terrorist regimes and their fellow travelers to condemn Israel for fighting back forcefully against the mortal threats in and along its borders. It’s even logical for those entities to bemoan the assassination of the mass murderers attempting to fulfill genocidal, hegemonic aspirations through the slaughter of Jews.

But when the knee-jerk reaction of self-proclaimed “human rights” champions with heavy titles and hefty budgets is to blame the Jewish state for defending itself, while making the free world a safer place, a more dangerous phenomenon is at work.

Nor does equating Israel with enemies bent on its destruction disguise the antisemitism at play. An expert at this transparent ploy is U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Following the Israeli airstrikes on Friday night in the Dahieh suburb of Beirut, Guterres expressed “grave concern.” What he didn’t do was mention the target of those attacks: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah—the mass murderer whose death was celebrated across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, by the victims of his brutality.

This “cycle of violence must stop now, and all sides must step back from the brink,” he said. “The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel, as well as the wider region, cannot afford an all-out war.”
The cycle of violence. That’s the classic euphemism employed by Israel’s detractors to deny its right—nay duty—to defend itself. And in case Guterres hasn’t been paying attention, an “all-out war” has been raging against the Jewish state for the past year, not including the ongoing battles imposed on it since its inception.

To make an even greater mockery of his role in the farcical international body, he proceeded to “urge the parties to recommit to the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 … and immediately return to a cessation of hostilities.”