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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Alex Traiman With bilateral agreements, Trump administration reverses Carter, Obama settlement policies

By on October 29th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/with-bilateral-agreements-trump-administration-reverses-carter-obama-settlement-policies/?utm_source=

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the signing “an important victory against all those who seek to delegitimize everything Israeli beyond the 1967 lines.”

Less than one week before Americans will decide whether to entrust President Donald Trump with another four years in office, the current administration completed its reversal of a legacy U.S. policy prejudiced against Israeli settlements.

The United States and Israel signed new bilateral agreements on Wednesday that further enhance the cooperation between the close allies in the areas of science, industrial research and agricultural.

Yet perhaps more noteworthy is that legacy “geographic restrictions” have now been removed from existing agreements.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman noted at the ceremony that the two nations were to “sign a revision that will eliminate the geographic restriction that prohibits the funding of American and Israeli joint research and development and cooperation over the Green Line.”

According to Friedman, the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), the Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Foundation (BARD) agreements each contained a passage stating that: “The cooperative projects sponsored by the foundation may not be conducted in geographic areas which came under the administration of the government of the State of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects pertinent to such areas.”

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Regional and Global Threat Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on October 29th, 2020

 https://bit.ly/37RszKK

Will the next US Administration sustain the realization that the clear and present threat of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood to every moderate Arab regime in the Middle East and North Africa (second only to the threat posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs) has been a key incentive for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to conclude the US-backed peace accords with Israel?

Will the next US Administration acknowledge the role played by Muslim Brotherhood subversion and terrorism in Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand security and commercial cooperation with Israel?

According to Prof. Albert Hourani, a leading Middle East historian, Oxford University’s St. Anthony’s College (A History of the Arab Peoples, pp. 445-446), the following are the tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood: “A total rejection of all forms of society except the wholly Islamic one…. The true Islamic society…was the one which accepted the sovereign authority of God [Allah]…which regarded the Quran as the source of all guidance for human life…. All other societies were societies of jahiliyya (ignorance of religious truth), whether they were communist, capitalist, nationalist, [followers of] false religions, or claimed to be Muslim but did not obey the Sharia…. The leadership of Western man in the human world is coming to an end…because the Western order has played its part, and no longer possesses that stock of values which gave it its predominance…. The turn of Islam has come….”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest Islamic terror organization in the world – supported mostly by Turkey’s Erdogan, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Qatar – with political branches throughout the globe (including in the USA), aiming to rid the Arab world of Western “infidel” influence (which drew the current map of the Middle East), topple existing Arab regimes in a subversive and revolutionary manner, Islamize Arab societies, establish a “divinely-ordained” pan-Islamic regime and spread Islam through violence/terrorism, as well as via political and organizational involvement (e.g., the Freedom and Justice Party in Libya, the ruling Ennahdha Party in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, the recently dissolved Islamic Action Front in Jordan, the Islamic Constitutional Movement in Kuwait, Jamaat-e-Islami in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Welfare Party of India).

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Moshe Phillips:The Syrian peace mirage posted by the Washington Times Peace with Syria is a suicidal fantasy – the war torn country is unstable, and would insist on Israel giving up the Golan Heights.

By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/290041

As soon as the headlines hit about the breakthrough in Sudan-Israel relations, pundits were already suggesting that the next news in the thawing of Arab nations toward Israel will involve Saudi Arabia. Whether or not this turns out to happen, one thing that is a certainty is that many former U.S. State Department and other American foreign policy alums will continue to push for Israel to make concessions that the vast majority of Israelis will never entertain under any circumstances.

While there is a sense of inevitability for Israelis that further normalization announcements are forthcoming, there are not any Israelis to be found who are speaking optimistically about any sort of peace with Syria while it remains under Assad’s totalitarian rule. But that didn’t stop one former US National Security Council (NSC) staffer from bellowing forth his ideas about this. Ideas that are dangerous and unwelcome in Israel.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement that Sudan was recognizing Israel and agreeing to relations, Benjamin Netanyahu told the media that “the clear fact of the matter is that for 25 years we didn’t have a [normalization] agreement and under Trump’s leadership we have three deals in six weeks.”

David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman unsurprisingly explained in The New York Times on October 24 that this Sudan news “does not represent the same kind of landmark strategic achievement as the peace treaties decades ago with Egypt and Jordan, once-bitter Arab enemies on its borders.”

The Sudan development is undeniably more closely akin to the evolution of relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain than to the treaties with Egypt and Jordan, although Sudan was actively hostile to Israel and took part in the 1948 War of Independence.

Egypt and Jordan were at various times “confrontation states,” that is, the nations that sent troops to battle Israel on the frontlines in war after bloody war. As did Syria and, it’s worth noting, Iraq.

What is often not understood, though, is that Syria is still officially at war with Israel. While there have been armistices, Damascus in a state of war with the Jewish State.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Big Picture and the War for the White House By Bryan Preston

By on October 28th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/bryan-preston/2020/10/28/the-big-picture-and-the-war-for-the-white-house-n1102713

Four years ago I was a very reluctant Trump voter.

I had laughed at a friend who told me, about two weeks before the 2016 election, that Donald Trump would win. It seemed absurd. Clinton was a lock. Everyone knew that.

But when it came time to vote, I looked at Trump and didn’t know what I would get. I looked at Hillary Clinton and knew exactly what I would get if she won.

As I weighed up the two candidates I figured at least I might get something I’d like from Trump. Maybe a good judge or two. Maybe a tax cut. Clinton was a guarantee that I would get no policy I could support, no good judges, nothing but corruption, deceit, and endless media fawning over every breath she took. She would be horrible. Trump might be interesting. He might be better than I expected, or worse, but he couldn’t be worse than Clinton.

So I rolled the dice and voted for Trump.

It was liberating. I hadn’t advocated for him. He wasn’t my first choice.

Four years later, as I explain in this week’s War for the White House podcast with Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw and Townhall’s Reagan McCarthy, I wasn’t reluctant at all. Based on my policy preferences and goals for the future of this country, Donald Trump has earned four more years in the Oval Office.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden family scandal: Seven uncomfortable realities confronting the Democrat nominee It’s not the Russians exposing Joe Biden, it’s his son’s former business partners. John Solomon

By on October 28th, 2020

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/biden-family-scandal-7-uncomfortable-realities

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has offered short, at times, halting defenses of his son Hunter’s business deals in recent weeks after months of ignoring an increasingly clear narrative of a family member pursuing lucrative business deals in the shadows of his vice presidency.

“Not one single solitary thing was out of line,” Biden said last Thursday when the questions about his son’s business dealings came up at the last presidential debate. “Not a single thing.”  

“My son has not made money in terms of this thing, about what are you talking about, China,” Biden said. “I have not had, the only guy that’s made money from China is this guy,” he added, point to Donald Trump.

Other times he and his defenders have rebuffed questions about the family business as a “smear job” or “Russian disinformation.” But Biden’s campaign hasn’t disputed much of the evidence that has become public, instead declaring it doesn’t matter because no crimes have been proven.

“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague, have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official US policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” a campaign spokesman said recently.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The DOJ’s Lawsuit Against Yale Is How To Win The Culture War By Sumantra Maitra

By on October 28th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/28/the-dojs-lawsuit-against-yale-is-how-to-win-the-culture-war/

For the first time in decades, the diversity bureaucrats dividing the country on the basis of race, class, and sex are worried about losing federal funding and being sued.

In a Bengali poem, one verse roughly translates to “the maddening rage of a caged impotent.” It fits the left’s reaction to the Trump administration’s executive order banning critical race training in federal departments and lawsuit against Yale University for discrimination against white and Asian applicants.

For a long time, the overwhelming majority of sane, hardworking people had to endure being ruled by a handful of ideologues and their crackpot theories, in a long march continued unopposed. Bafflingly, for decades there was zero substantive pushback among Republican lawmakers, even from ostensibly conservative presidents. That has now changed. Whoever takes up the mantle of post-Trump conservatism, things are not going back to meek subservience.

The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Yale for discriminating against Asians and white applicants in undergraduate admissions. The lawsuit argues that qualified Asians and whites are discriminated against in favor of black applicants, and are likely to only win one-quarter of admissions compared to lesser qualified people based solely on race, in what the DOJ considers to be affirmative action.

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ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Twitter, Facebook Confess There Is No Evidence Of Russian Disinformation Behind Hunter Biden Story  By Jordan Davidson

By on October 28th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/28/twitter-facebook-confess-there-is-no-evidence-of-russian-disinformation-behind-hunter-biden-story/

n Wednesday’s Senate hearing on Big Tech and Section 230, both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that neither had any evidence that the New York Post’s reporting on Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals is Russian disinformation.

“For both Mr. Zuckerberg and Dorsey who censored the New York Post stories or throttle them back, do you have any evidence that the New York Post story is part of Russian disinformation or that those emails are not authentic?” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked. “Do you have any information whatsoever they are not authentic or they are Russian disinformation?

Dorsey and Zuckerberg both denied receiving any indication that the story was part of a Russian misinformation campaign.

Within days of the story’s censorship, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe explicitly debunked the disinformation claims made by Rep. Adam Schiff, when he reported the intelligence community has no evidence that the bombshell story was a foreign attempt to spread misinformation and interfere in the U.S. election.

“Let me be clear,” he said on Fox News, “The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that.”

“We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff, or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe clarified. “It’s simply not true.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Is Doing Better In Michigan And Wisconsin Than Polls Suggest By Chris Bedford and John Daniel Davidson

By on October 28th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/28/trump-is-doing-better-in-michigan-and-wisconsin-than-polls-suggest/

A week-long trip through these Midwest battleground states talking with ordinary people convinced us the polls aren’t telling the full story.

There’s something afoot in Michigan and Wisconsin. If you believe the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden is set to win both these states in November—battlegrounds President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2016, and can ill afford to lose this time around.

Some pollsters say Biden is ahead by as much as 17 points in Wisconsin and a dozen points in Michigan, suggesting the Democrats have rebuilt their so-called “blue wall” in the industrial Midwest. If that’s true, the president’s path to reelection is in jeopardy. But then, the same pollsters also put Hillary Clinton comfortably ahead in both states just four years ago.

We just spent a week driving through Michigan and Wisconsin, talking with farmers, bartenders, politicians, priests, and ordinary voters, from suburban Detroit to western Wisconsin, and what we saw and heard left us with a very different impression: Trump’s support here is not reflected in the polls, and he might well win both states.

Just north of Detroit in Macomb County, which twice voted for Barack Obama but flipped for Trump four years ago, there were few signs of a robust Democratic ground game. We talked to one bar owner, a Democrat who volunteered for Obama’s reelection, who told us he’s worried Trump might win here again—not just because Trump supporters are so motivated, but because the neighbors and customers who tell him they’re not voting for Trump don’t seem excited about Biden.

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ELECTIONS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

There Really Has Been a ‘Trump Effect’ on Immigration By Steven A. Camarota

By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/there-really-has-been-a-trump-effect-on-immigration/#slide-1

And some American workers seem to have benefited.

Recently released Census Bureau data from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) show that in the first two years of the Trump administration, growth in the immigrant population (legal and illegal) averaged only about 200,000 a year, which stands in stark contrast with the roughly 650,000 a year from 2010 to 2017. The bureau refers to immigrants as “foreign-born,” which includes anyone who was not a U.S. citizen at birth — naturalized citizens, green card holders, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal aliens. It seems almost certain that the slowdown in growth was the result of Trump-administration policies.

One can debate whether this falloff in growth is a positive or negative development, but it is clear that the often-made argument that immigration is like a force of nature, largely driven by economics and outside the control of governmental policy, is false. Although the lower courts have fought the president at every turn, the federal bureaucracy has been resistive, many states have actively subverted the rule of law, and Congress has offered no help, changes adopted by the administration did reduce immigration — both legal and illegal.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Hunter Biden on Tape? Recording purports to capture candidate’s son rambling about big Chinese business, disappearing partner, and a criminal trial. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/hunter-biden-on-tape/

I n a newly released recording, a man purported to be Hunter Biden is heard rambling about (a) his legal representation of Patrick Ho, a convicted former Hong Kong official he refers to as “the f***ing spy chief of China”; (b) his business dealings with Ye Jianming, the corrupt Chinese high roller, whom Hunter describes as “my partner, who is worth $323 billion … and is now missing”; and (c) his complaints about his “best friend in business, Devon” — presumably, Devon Archer, the now-convicted fraudster who was Hunter’s business partner — who had “named me as a witness without telling me in a criminal case and my father without telling me.”

Quite the crowd the Bidens run with.

While no date has been given for this recording, I theorize that — assuming it is authentic — it happened in approximately May 2018, for reasons I’ll get to.

The recording is the latest installment of information presumably from Biden’s laptops, which is being rolled out by Raheem Kassam, using his new project, The National Pulse. Kassam is a British commentator and former UKIP party adviser who is close to Steve Bannon — Kassam ran Breitbart-London when Bannon was Breitbart’s executive director.

Bannon is currently facing federal fraud charges. He is, of course, a former White House adviser who had a falling out with President Trump but has retained ties with him. Bannon was one of the prominent Trump outside advisers (Rudy Giuliani being the other) whom the New York Post identified as having alerted the paper to the existence of the Hunter Biden materials. Kassam appears regularly on Bannon’s War Room broadcasts — and, indeed, they appeared together Tuesday and played what they represented to be the Hunter Biden recording.

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