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Ruth King

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Leftists Alarmed At Trump Hopes For Mideast Peace By Benny Avni

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/leftist-is-alarmed-at-trump-hopes-for-mideast/91254/

“Angels are rare, if they exist at all, in the Middle East. Yet if Israel can find true peace, even with imperfect regimes, the region would be better off. One side benefit: some Arab leaders begin to realize that, beyond entrepreneurship and high-tech, emulating Israel’s liberal ethos could be useful for them as well.”

No sooner has the Arab-Israel Spring started to blossom than the Leftists are up in arms. Gulf capitals now formalizing relations with Jerusalem are, they complain, ruled by non-democratic bad guys. Exhibit a: Bahrain, where a Sunni minority, backed by Saudi Arabia, rules over restive Shiite population.

Bahrain has just announced that it will join the United Arab Emirates Tuesday at a White House ceremony, where President Trump and his top Mideast aide and son in law, Jared Kushner, are scheduled to host Prime Minister Netanyahu and the U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zaid. In the event, the first peace agreement between (now two) Arab countries and the Jewish state in a quarter century will be sealed with hand shakes.

Mr. Trump hints of more to come. Saudi Arabia, vying for leadership in the region, is the big prize. The U.A.E., and certainly Bahrain, wouldn’t have signed on without its blessing, but, even as it allows for Israeli flights over its skies, Riyadh has yet to join them.

Critics won’t be inaccurate in noting the failures of the Gulf’s emirates, sultanates ,and theocracies involved in this breakthrough. Yet haven’t those same critics for years insisted that “you make peace with enemies”? Don’t they push the line that there can be no true peace before Jerusalem comes to terms with the Palestinian Authority, which similarly fails the paragon-of-democracy, benevolent-ruler test?

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Is Trump on the Way To Historic Mideast Peace?

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/is-trump-on-the-way-to-a-historic-mideast-peace

President Trump’s announcement today that Bahrain will be the latest Arab country to recognize Israel starts to make it look like we could be on the way to a Mideast Peace. It would be unwise to get ahead of events, but it would also be unwise not to recognize at least the possibility that is coming into view. Predicting this development Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “You could have peace in the Middle East.”

The announcement by the White House today comes in advance of what was already shaping up as a remarkable event for Tuesday, when Mr. Trump is due to host at the White House the signing of the entente between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be there, as will U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Now, the White House says, Bahrain will be there, as well.

We don’t mind saying that we were opposed to Mr. Trump’s pursuit of a Middle East peace. It was nothing personal. We’ve opposed nearly all American efforts to play the so-called “honest broker” in the Middle East. Our preference has been to back Israel and wait for the rest of the region to come around (or not). Pursuing peace by getting between the Jewish state and her enemies does more harm than good.

Yet Mr. Trump has impressed us with his sagacity. We first tipped our hat to it two weeks into his presidency, when we issued an editorial called “Trump’s Iran Strategy.” It had quickly become apparent that he was going to focus, as we put it, “less on the Palestinain predicament and more on winning the war against jihadist Islam.” He was going to side with the Sunni Arabs against Shiite Iran.

In that feud we don’t have a strong view. It did, though, put Israel’s Arab neighbors in the thrall of, in Mr. Trump, an exceptionally strong backer of Israel. Mr. Trump’s redemption of his campaign promise to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem put the Arabs in a position that they would have to choose. It did so more emphatically than any recent démarche we can think of.

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The Middle Eastern Wall Crumbles The “Abraham Accord” is a major breakthrough, aided by American leadership and exceptionalism. Shoshana Bryen

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-middle-eastern-wall-crumbles/

Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat, U.S. President’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates Anwar Gargash hold a meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates August 31, 2020. (Photo: UAE Government)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy successes in the Middle East consist primarily of opening artificial floodgates and allowing for the passage of political currents already moving. That is not a small thing—Norwegian parliamentarian Christian Tybring-Gjedde agreed, nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize for the Israel-UAE normalization deal dubbed the “Abraham Accord.”

History is not a series of dates (high school students to the contrary). Dates are simply points in a process: July 4, 1776, D-Day and V-E Day, the “Abraham Accord” and the treaties with Egypt and Jordan that preceded it. They are the result of streams of percolating events, allowing for shifting times, tides and armies. A country or a politician or a terrorist can throw up a roadblock. It may forestall movement for a time, but ultimately, perceived national interest and the threats to those interests will undermine a wall that has lost its relevance.

American neutrality was firmly in control in 1939, but the tide turned to helping our British friends and Russian allies in 1940. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor (another date) America had changed.

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“COVID-19 Has Gone to College – Or Has It?” Sydney Williams

By on September 12th, 2020

A critical component of democracy is education. The perpetuation of our political institutions, as Abraham Lincoln warned in Springfield, Illinois on a January evening in 1838, is not a given. Passion, he warned, can be our enemy. “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.” It is to teach one to reason, to think, to calculate that universities exist. 

In his 1916 book Democracy and Education, the educational reformer John Dewey argued it is education that allows youth to become productive members of society. Franklin Roosevelt said that “the real safeguard to democracy is education.” It is a sentiment that has been expressed by hundreds of politicians and philosophers over the years. Today, in a risk adverse world, schools, colleges and universities weigh needs of students to learn versus fear of COVID-19 and lawsuits that might ensue. Nevertheless, online learning is no substitute for in-person classrooms.

Most would agree that a failure to open schools and colleges is harmful to students. However, there are some administrators and professors (as well as a few students) who are vulnerable, either because of age or comorbidities, so universities should proceed with caution. There are, however, some who want to keep the pandemic alive for political purposes, a view endorsed by mainstream media. A New York Times article last Sunday was headlined: “A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns.” The article, which focused on the University of Iowa, reported there were “about 100 college communities around the country where infections have spiked in recent weeks as students returned for the fall semester” – a self-evident truth, as students did return to campuses. The article did add that “there has been no uptick in deaths in college communities,” but they failed to mention a subsequent decline in instances. For example, in Iowa City, there was a spike on August 27 and 28 (1,467 and 2,632 cases respectively), but, left unmentioned, by September 1 the number was down to 612 and on September 7 at 408, in line with where it had been before students returned to the campus. The headline was provocative and deceptive.

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In Worst-Hit Covid State, New York’s Cuomo Called All the Shots By Jimmy Vielkind, Joe Palazzo and Jacob Gershman 

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-covid-new-york-coronavirus-de-blasio-shutdown-timing-11599836994?mod=itp_wsj&mod=&mod=djemITP_h
Governor overrode mayor on shutdown timing, faced criticism for nursing home moves; ‘It’s not your call’

New York City was locking down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to say when and how it would happen.

After Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents in a March 17 news conference to prepare to “shelter in place,” Mr. Cuomo dismissed the mayor’s plan in a television interview while his aides blitzed City Hall with calls.

“The phones were ringing off the hook,” recalled Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary at the time. “They said, ‘[The mayor] sounds crazy. He’s scaring people. You have to walk it back. It’s not up to you. It’s not your call.’ ”

The federal government largely left the coronavirus response to states. While some governors ceded power to local officials, others centralized it. Mr. Cuomo, more than most state leaders, insisted that nearly every decision come from his office, including when to close office buildings, the size of weddings and the type of air filters required at shopping malls.

Mr. Cuomo and his small team took command of the state Health Department and overrode local governments that wanted to go beyond the state’s social-distancing restrictions. That delayed the shutdown of the nation’s biggest city and slowed the reaction time as the virus spread in nursing homes, contributing to the nation’s highest death toll.

Instead of the abrupt shutdown Mr. de Blasio called for, Mr. Cuomo had his own plan: a gradual closure tailored to avoid panic and encourage public compliance. Millions of people continued to pack commuter trains and subways in the five-day span between Mr. de Blasio’s “shelter in place” comments and Mr. Cuomo’s eventual shutdown order.

By the time “New York on Pause” took effect at 8 p.m. on March 22, about 25,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for Covid-19. The virus soon would push the state’s hospital system to the brink and kill more than 30,000.

State lawmakers are still assessing whom to blame for the thousands of deaths of nursing-home residents. The Justice Department recently said it had requested data on nursing-home deaths and infections from New York and several other states to determine whether an investigation is warranted—an announcement Mr. Cuomo said was politically motivated.

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A Scientific Approach to Evaluating COVID Policy By Tomas J. Philipson & Eric Sun

By on September 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/coronavirus-policy-economic-costs-scientific-approach-evaluation/

Has the U.S. incurred larger COVID losses than countries held up as role models?

The idea that America has incurred larger losses from COVID than any other nation has been widely repeated, but it’s not true. In reality, the United States has incurred smaller COVID losses than many other countries often cast as role models, once the total cost of the disease — in both lost lives and economic activity — is correctly measured and taken into account. A truly scientific approach to evaluating COVID policy relies on quantification of the tradeoffs involved, as opposed to only considering health losses.

The issue is how to measure the quantitative magnitudes of two separate strands of losses, the cost of disease prevention and the cost of the disease itself, to guide policy on minimizing the total impact. Economists routinely quantify and assess tradeoffs between health and other valuable activities to determine overall costs they impose. Doing so does not trivialize human life but acknowledges — as all of us must — that saving lives at any cost is not practical nor desirable.

Consider a somewhat extreme hypothetical example. Over 40,000 people die on U.S. roads each year, yet we don’t shut down highways. Instead of closing them — and losing all the economic benefits they provide — the government manages but does not eliminate the risks from bad drivers by regulating speed limits, enforcing DUI laws, and requiring people to have licenses to drive. Put differently, closing roads would entail a loss from prevention that would be higher than the value of the lives saved.

Tradeoffs obviously play a role in setting health-related policies. Yet some epidemiologists ignore tradeoffs when pushing for their preferred COVID prevention. They only measure one type of loss in terms of health. However, these medical scientists still drive to work like everyone else, even though their mortality would be lower if they did not. This shows how, in every other aspect of life, common sense balances the costs of prevention against its benefits in terms of lower mortality. But for COVID policy decisions, in many locales, the so-called scientists adhere to unscientific economic claims about the quantitative tradeoffs involved.

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What Islamists and ‘Wokeists’ Have in Common Adherents of both pursue ideological purity, refuse to engage in debate and demand submission. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

By on September 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-islamists-and-wokeists-have-in-common-11599779507?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There were many American heroes on 9/11, but the greatest were the passengers and crew of Flight 93. Not only did they avert what al Qaeda planned—a direct hit on the White House—but they also embodied Patrick Henry’s credo “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

Do those words still have a meaning in the America of 2020? For two decades, I have opposed the fanatical illiberalism of those strands of Islam that gave rise to al Qaeda. I broke with my Somali family and ultimately with their faith because I believed that it is human freedom that should be sacrosanct, not antiquated doctrines that demand submission by the individual.

So implacable are the proponents of Shariah that I have faced repeated death threats. Yet I have always consoled myself that, in the U.S., freedom of conscience and expression rank above any set of religious beliefs. It was partly for this reason that I moved here and became a citizen in 2013.

It never occurred to me that free speech would come under threat in my newly adopted country. Even when I first encountered what has come to be known as “cancel culture”—in 2014 I was invited to receive an honorary degree at Brandeis University and then ungraciously disinvited—I didn’t fret too much. I was inclined to dismiss the alliance of campus leftists and Islamists as a lunatic fringe.

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Showdown in the Mediterranean Two NATO allies could go to war over a maritime dispute.

By on September 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/showdown-in-the-mediterranean-11599780440?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Aegean Sea surface temperatures naturally can reach the 80s, but the region has come to a boil this summer. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s confrontation with Greece over maritime claims could be resolved through diplomacy. The question is whether Mr. Erdogan wants to negotiate or simply assert Turkish power.

Territorial disputes around the Turkish coast and several nearby Greek islands existed long before Mr. Erdogan took office, but the Turkish leader’s growing belligerence has caused the latest round of tension. He unilaterally claims vast chunks of territory for Turkey and has escalated by sending exploration vessels into disputed territory with support from the navy. Each side has legitimate claims but Ankara justifies bad behavior with nationalist rhetoric.

“They’re either going to understand the language of politics and diplomacy, or in the field with painful experiences,” Mr. Erdogan declared Saturday. While leaders usually reserve such language for adversaries, Mr. Erdogan was threatening a NATO ally. The alliance hoped relations between Greece and Turkey would improve when they joined in 1952, but the two have come close to war three times since the 1970s. Tensions worsened as gas was discovered around the Eastern Mediterranean in recent years.

Turkey also has issues with Cyprus, which belongs to the European Union but not NATO. Ankara invaded the island in 1974 and is the only country in the world to recognize Turkish-speaking Northern Cyprus as a state. The south wants to cut deals with foreign energy firms but Ankara demands the north gets a share. Separately, Turkey wants economic rights in waters Cyprus sees as its own.

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California Governor Urged to Veto Bill Mandating ‘Antisemitic’ Curriculum for High School Students

By on September 11th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/09/10/california-governor-urged-to-veto-bill-mandating-antisemitic-curriculum-for-high-school-students/

Dozens of organizations sent an open letter on Thursday to California Governor Gavin Newsom demanding that he veto a recently‐passed bill that would require high school students in his state to study an ethnic studies curriculum that is viewed by many as being biased and antisemitic.

The bill, AB 331, mandates courses derived from the new Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), which has aroused intense protest from parents, politicians and advocacy groups.

The letter, organized by the AMCHA Initiative and signed by 80 organizations, expressed concern “that classes taught using this curriculum will become vehicles for highly controversial, one-sided political advocacy and activism that will both subvert the educational mission of our schools and incite bigotry and harm against many students.”

“We are especially concerned that the anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideological orientation of Critical Ethnic Studies … will foster a toxic climate for Jewish and pro-Israel students throughout the state, and foment harm against them,” the letter continued.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The ‘Merchants of the Palestinian Issue’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on September 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16486/merchants-palestinian-issue

Many Gulf citizens described the Palestinian leaders as “merchants of the Palestinian issue” and accused them of financial corruption and embezzlement of public funds.

“The enemy of the Palestinian cause is not Israel, but the [Palestinian] comrades, the disgraceful merchants of Palestine, who don’t want the Palestinian issue to be resolved. Before you [Palestinian leaders] criticize others, you need to take a look at yourselves and your miserable situation and the condition of your people, whom you have destroyed.” — Shuja Al-Hothli, Saudi journalist and author, Twitter, September 7, 2020.

Palestinian leaders have accumulated huge personal fortunes, possibly in part thanks to donations from Western taxpayers and their unenquiring governments.

Some Gulf Arabs interpreted Hamed’s remarks as incitement to carry out terrorist attacks against the Gulf states. “The funny thing is that Mueen Hamed called for armed actions against the Gulf, not Israel.” — Saudi social media user who calls himself inthe_shade911, Twitter, September 6, 2020.

By alienating the Gulf Arabs, the Palestinian leaders are further ravaging their own people, especially those who live and work in these countries. Abbas has already wrecked the Palestinians’ relations with Israel and the US. By offending the Gulf states and depicting their residents as backward illiterates, Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian factions are convincing yet more Arabs to stay as far away from Palestinians as they can.

Palestinian leaders are continuing to show contempt for other Arabs, including those who for many years provided them with financial and political aid. Some Palestinian leaders are even indirectly inciting their people to carry out terrorist attacks against Gulf countries that engage in normalization with Israel.

On September 3, during a videoconference meeting of leaders of several Palestinian factions, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas poured scorn on the Arabs of the Gulf states by hinting that they are illiterate and uneducated. “There are 13 million Palestinians, and they are all educated,” Abbas said in a speech he delivered from his office in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians. “We don’t have illiteracy like others.”

Mueen Hamed, a representative of As-Sa’iqa, a pro-Syria Palestinian Ba’athist group, is one of several faction leaders who spoke at the conference from Beirut. Hamed, too, mocked the Gulf Arabs.

Referring to the recent normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, he said:

“We blame the United Arab Emirates and the [Arab] countries that support it. As our comrades said, the Palestinian people were responsible for the advancement of all the Gulf states from 1948 and until today. Everyone acknowledges that the Palestinian worker is the most active in the Gulf. [The Palestinians] taught them how to read and write and lead.”

Hamed pointed out that there are 400,000 Palestinians in the UAE “who are capable of changing the society of the Emiratis.”

“Why shouldn’t these Palestinians play a role? Why shouldn’t the Palestinian factions be in contact with all these Palestinians so they could play an active role in preventing any country from following suit with the United Arab Emirates? The situation is dangerous.”

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