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Americans Have the Right to Know About Biden’s Upcoming Deal with Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17350/biden-upcoming-iran-deal

Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed?

If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

The American public has the right to know what sanctions the Biden administration are planning to lift because this regime has been killing Americans and taking hostages for almost four decades.

“Last week, Iran’s chief diplomat allegedly admitted the IRGC calls the shots in Tehran. Now, Iran releases a fake video of the IRGC blowing up our Capitol. The Biden admin’s priority should be ensuring Iran cannot carry out such an attack, not capitulating by removing sanctions.” — US Senator Pat Toomey, Twitter, May 2, 2021.

Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime — the one that the US Department of Justice has called the “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, it has been easier to get information about the talks from the Russian and Iranian leaders than from the Biden administration. While Iran and Russia, for example, have been saying for weeks that they are progressing towards a deal, the Biden administration, at home and in front of the allies such as Israel, has continued to downplay the possibility of a deal with Iran. Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed? Or is it meant to keep the public and the Congress’s guard down to later surprise them with a deal? If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

After the Europeans admitted around May 1 that a deal is close to being finalized, the Biden administration finally had no option other than to reveal the truth on May 8 and acknowledge that a deal is in fact on the way.

How To Assure Repetition of Hamas Rocket Attacks by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17367/hamas-rocket-attacks

There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel…. That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back.

The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful — terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as… the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past [many] years.

Hamas has been greatly rewarded by the international community, by human rights groups, by the media, by many academics and by millions of decent people for its indecent double war crime tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian human shields. Israel has been significantly punished for trying to protect its citizens from these rockets.

So here… is the twelve-step program that Hamas and the international community should follow if it truly wants to see terrorism become the primary tactic used against democracies by those with perceived grievances.

Step 9: Accuse the democracy of war crimes and bring cases against its leaders and soldiers in courts sympathetic to Hamas around the world. Bringing the lawsuits will create a presumption of guilt, even if the charges are dismissed months or years later.

Step 10: Schedule various United Nations “debates” at which tyrannical dictatorships from around the world line up… to condemn Israel for crimes routinely committed by these dictatorships but not by Israel.

Step 11: Trot out the usual stable of reliable anti-Israel academics to flood newspapers and television shows with some of the worst drivel about international law, human rights and the laws of war — drivel that would earn students failing grades in any objective law school course on these subjects.

Now here are six steps for those democracies that would actually like to put an end to terrorist attacks against its civilians.

Step 4: Never allow human rights, international organizations or war crime tribunals to be hijacked by the supporters or terrorism and the enemies of democracy to punish only those who seek to protect their civilians against terrorism.

Not only must terrorism never be rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made… worse off as a result of the terrorism than it would have been without it.

No wonder Hamas, and other terrorist groups, regard their war crimes tactic as a win-win for terrorism and a lose-lose for democracy.

This article was originally published in a slightly different form in 2009. Nothing has changed.

There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel and that other terrorist groups will increase the use of terrorism against civilians around the world. That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back. This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the recent events in Gaza, but it is not a new lesson. In 2002, in a book entitled Why Terrorism Works, I made a point that is even more relevant today than it was then:

“The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful — terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as it continues to work for those who use it, as long as the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past thirty-five years.”

MORE HEADLINES WORLD NEWS MAY 14, 2021

Former Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer: Evangelical Christians ‘Backbone’ of Israel’s Support in U.S. https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2021/05/12/former-israeli-ambassador-ron-dermer-evangelical-christians-backbone-israels-support-us/

Israel rejects Biden administration’s calls for ceasefire https://www.wnd.com/2021/05/4915181/
Report: Israel rules out ceasefire after Hamas seeks international mediation https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/05/12/report-israel-rules-out-ceasefire-after-hamas-seeks-international-mediation/

The Dark Face of Palestinian Terror https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/dark-face-palestinian-terror-joseph-klein/
Congressional ‘Jihad Squad’ Slammed for Supporting Jerusalem Terror https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/05/congressional-jihad-squad-slammed-for-supporting-jerusalem-terror/
Nikki Haley Torches Ilhan Omar’s Take on Israel https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/05/11/nikki-haley-tortures-ilhan-omar-n2589284?
Rashida Tlaib Exposes Her Own Shocking Ignorance with ‘Temple Mount’ Tweet https://unitedwithisrael.org/rashida-tlaib-exposes-her-own-shocking-ignorance-with-temple-mount-tweet/?
WATCH: Victim Bloodied by Violent Palestinian Rioters in New York https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-victim-bloodied-by-violent-palestinian-rioters-in-new-york/?

Move the “Genocide Olympics” Out of China by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17334/china-genocide-olympics

The letter’s signatories remind the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee of their charter commitments and international obligations pertaining to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for Genocide.

“At least one million of these victims are incarcerated in scores of concentration camps, some replete with crematoria, where they are being brainwashed, raped, forcibly aborted and sterilized, tortured, organ-harvested and forced to perform slave labor. Is that acceptable to the U.S. Olympic Committee? Would your organization want to be associated with, let alone be seen as condoning, such barbaric behavior?” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games” signed by at least 115 human rights and faith organizations.

“[T]he PRC has given no indication that it will abandon the genocidal oppression of Uyghurs and others, let alone dismantle the massive infrastructure used for this purpose. Rather, the CCP will no doubt exploit the ‘Genocide Games’ as proof that the world is indifferent to, if not actually implicitly endorsing, its crimes against humanity.” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games.”

“Then there is the matter of the Chinese Communist Party’s involuntary extraction of vital organs. Eminent international human rights experts have found that forced organ harvesting is taking place in the PRC on an industrial scale. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of China’s own people, ethnic and religious minorities and prisoners of conscience have been murdered to profit the CCP. Is the U.S. Olympic Committee willing to associate with the perpetrators of these crimes?” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games.”

More than three million deaths worldwide have been caused by Communist China for failing to disclose, and even outright lying about, the human-to-human transmissibility of the Wuhan virus. Virtually every country has been victimized by what can only be regarded as Communist China’s mass murder. So why should nearly 200 countries reward China with the economic bonanza and implicit legitimacy that hosting the 2022 winter Olympics would confer?

All the countries crushed both by deaths caused by Communist China’s conscious export of its virus and the economic devastation that followed need to make sure that instead of being enriched and celebrated, Communist China should be held to account — at the very least by being invoiced for the damage it caused and removed from hosting the Olympic games.

Human rights and faith groups — such as the Committee on the Present Danger: China’s Captive Nations Coalition, Women’s Rights without Frontiers, and Save the Persecuted Christians — have requested in an open letter to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) that the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved out of China because of its genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang and severe oppression of its other citizens. The letter’s 108 signatories remind the USOPC and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of their charter commitments and international obligations pertaining to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for Genocide. The letter entitled “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games” said, in part:

Iran Building Precision-Guided Missiles for Hezbollah What “resisting” Israel really means. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/iran-building-precision-guided-missiles-hezbollah-hugh-fitzgerald/

Iran claims that its citizens are in Syria mainly to help with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Israel has good reason to think — and act — otherwise. Asked to comment on reports that Iran was building highly lethal weapons– precision-guided missiles — for Hezbollah, Iran feigned indignation. “Israel Intensifying Air War in Syria Against Iranian Encroachment,” Algemeiner, April 22, 2021:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Iran has said it has military advisers in Syria to help Assad’s forces, and will continue a policy “resisting” US and Israeli power in the wider Middle East.

Nothing says “resisting” Israeli power like shipping 150,000 missiles to Hezbollah for future launches against Israel, even though at the time those missiles were shipped Israel had not attacked a single Iranian target, inside or outside Iran.

Over the past year, Israeli warplanes, missiles and drones have hit a far wider range of targets — from suspected Iranian guided missile research and production sites to arms storage depots — than in the previous five years, said three Israeli officials and a senior Western official based in the region.

In the latest strike on Thursday, Israel hit al Dumair on the northeastern outskirts of Damascus which it has repeatedly hit in the past and where suspected Iranian-backed militias have a strong presence.

Jane’s defense news analysts said that over a three-year span Israel had used 4,239 weapons against 955 targets with 70% of Israeli pilots involved in the campaign, with the new F-35I Adir fighter jets leading dozens of missions.

It’s a fantastic record. In the last decade of bombing sites in Syria, the Israelis have lost exactly one plane, an F-16, which crashed inside Israel, as did the pilot, who has since recovered from his wounds. In the last three years alone, Israel has hit almost a thousand targets, and many of them have been hit repeatedly, as 4,239 weapons were used. Israel keeps upping both the number of targets, and the number of hits, whether by bombs, missiles, or drones.

Appropriating ‘Apartheid’ to Bash Israel Human Rights Watch traduces the sacred memories of South African victims. By Warren Goldstein

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appropriating-apartheid-to-bash-israel-11620663819?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

“So why the lie? Because Human Rights Watch seeks to delegitimize Israel, to portray it falsely as a state founded on the cardinal sin of racism, thereby denying it the moral right to exist.”

Johannesburg, South Africa

Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of apartheid. Yet in making the accusation in an April 27 report, the group brazenly acknowledges that it has “detached the term apartheid from its original South African context.”

This is immoral. “Apartheid” has a sacred historical meaning, sanctified by the blood and suffering of millions of South Africans who were oppressed and discriminated against on the basis of race. In appropriating the word, Human Rights Watch presents a grotesquely distorted picture of both South African history and the current reality in Israel.

Apartheid was a state-enforced national system of racial discrimination that manifested in a slew of oppressive laws aimed at obliterating the human rights of an entire race—among them the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, and the Separate Amenities Act. Black South Africans were denied the vote and equality before the law until 1994.

In contrast, within the borders of the state of Israel, all citizens—Jews, Arabs or otherwise—have the right to vote and complete equality before the law. They participate side by side in elections, and Israeli Arabs hold high-ranking positions throughout the Israeli government, including the Knesset and the Supreme Court. After the recent election, an Arab-led party holds the balance of power in the Knesset, and it was an Arab judge that convicted former Israeli president Moshe Katzav.

Afghanistan’s Terror Future Emboldened militants kill dozens of schoolgirls in Kabul.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-terror-future-11620679849?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan undermines American security interests, but the humanitarian disaster may be more immediate. The attack on a school in Kabul over the weekend is a likely preview.

Even in Afghanistan, Saturday’s bombings stood out as particularly depraved. It began when a suicide bomber detonated a car at the gates of a mixed-gender school. As surviving students fled, two more bombs exploded nearby. This left more than 80 dead and nearly twice as many wounded.

The bombings were timed to ensure that schoolgirls, who attend classes on a different schedule than boys, were the primary victims. And it’s no accident that the attack took place in a predominantly Shiite Hazara part of Kabul. Religious minorities and women were among those who suffered the most under Taliban rule in the 1990s. They won’t fare any better if the group retakes control of the country.

Expect even more violence as U.S. and allied forces complete their withdrawal sometime this summer: Attacks on girls for going to school and on religious minorities simply for existing, and terrorist violence to scare anyone who thinks of resisting.

Natan Sharansky: A Hero for All Seasons by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17345/natan-sharansky

Sharansky reasons that until there is a fundamental internal transformation of Palestinian Arab society that embraces democracy, there can be no realistic negotiations. He roundly condemns Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a terrorist. He views his successor Mahmoud Abbas as a pale and equally corrupt reflection of his predecessor. Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel’s elimination. Sharansky underscores his point by quoting Soviet dissident and creator of the USSR’s hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov: “Never trust a government more than it trusts its own people.”

Sharansky comes down hard on the Iranian regime as ideologically the most dangerous of enemies, claiming that he is in agreement with prominent Iranian analysts such as, Uri Lubrani, the last Israeli unofficial ambassador to Iran; Dr. Bernard Lewis, the most accomplished western Islamic scholar, and Ron Dermer, the long-serving Israeli ambassador to the US. Sharansky has sharp words of condemnation for Barack Obama; he accuses the former US President of having abandoned Iran’s dissidents by his refusal to offer even verbal support for anti-regime demonstrators during their nationwide protests in 2009.

Sharansky… is a fierce critic of the “new” campus-based anti-Semitism, and catalogues several programs that Israeli and some American Jews have developed to lend courage to Jewish-American youths to defend, fight back, and celebrate their Jewish identity in the face of radical Jew-haters as well as self-hating American Jews who serve as a poisonous brew that eventually destroy both the institutions of democracy and the freedoms of individual liberty.

Natan Sharansky. (Image source: Ram Mendel/Wikimedia Commons)

Natan Sharansky’s recent autobiography “Never Alone” is a testament to what a solitary soul can endure and then accomplish if he maintains a life of principled consistency. The book’s first section recapitulates Sharansky’s “refusenik” role in the USSR in defense of the human rights of Soviet Jews. This period also covers his nearly nine-year incarceration in the KGB’s infamous prisons. Sharansky credits his unwavering faith in the G-d of the Jewish Bible, his awareness of his wife Avital’s relentless efforts to rally global dignitaries and world Jewry to work for his release, and his mastery of mental chess matches to sustain hope for his ultimate liberation. In retrospect, Sharansky celebrates the improbable unity of Israeli Jews and the Jews of the Diaspora as the formula that forced the totalitarian Soviet empire to disgorge him to freedom.

Bay of Pigs 60th Anniversary Part III – Humiliating Che Guevara and John Kerry A brave Cuban freedom fighter confronts Kerry’s lies. Humberto Fontova

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bay-pigs-60th-anniversary-part-iiihumiliating-che-humberto-fontova/

”This is the history of a failure.” — The oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies.

“Those Cuban-CIA men [Bay of Pigs vets] were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding.” — Legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary.

“I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We’re going to kill you all,’ Che said to Pino. Now, the situation was reversed. Che Guevara lay at my feet. He looked like a piece of trash. I said, ‘Che Guevara, I want to talk to you.'” — Former President of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Felix Rodriguez (pictured above), recalling Che Guevara’s capture in Bolivia, where he played a key role.

“Senator [John Kerry] your committee’s slander against me was in every g*dd*mmed newspaper after your committee’s last closed hearing! Saying I solicited drug money for the Contras. THAT, senator Kerry, is a D*MNED LIE!…and it difficult for me to answer questions from a man (you, the chairman of the committee) I do not RESPECT!” — Felix Rodriguez testifying for Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations hearings chaired by Senator John Kerry in 1986. These evolved into the Iran-Contra hearings.

After being ransomed back by the guilt-stricken JFK after his Bay of Pigs betrayal, many of these Cuban freedom-fighters were itching to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent a group of them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘64 where Castro (with tongue tucked deeply in his cheek) had sent Che Guevara to foment a “war of liberation,” training and commanding the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed “Simbas” of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.

Together, Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of Che and Kabila’s Simbas. Guevara himself barely escaped by hightailing it with his tail tucked firmly between his legs across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania, with the Cuba-CIA men in hot pursuit.

Too bad Hollywood never picked up on this exploit for one of their many glorifications of Che — worse still that Monty Python’s Flying Circus didn’t pick it up. I’ll even start the script for them: “In 1965, while planning a military campaign in the Congo against crack mercenaries commanded by a professional soldier who helped defeat Rommel in North Africa, Che confidently allied himself with ‘soldiers’ who used chicken feathers for helmets and stood in the open waving at attacking aircraft because a muganga (witch doctor) had assured them that the magic water he sprinkled over them would make .50 caliber bullets bounce harmlessly off their bodies. Six months later, Che fled Africa, narrowly escaping with his life and with his tail tucked tightly between his legs.”

China Aims to Become the World’s Leading Space Power by 2045 by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17306/china-space-power

“China is taking steps to establish a commanding position in the commercial launch and satellite sectors relying in part on aggressive state-backed financing that foreign market-driven companies cannot match.” — US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its 2019 Annual Report to Congress.

“Chinese and Russian space activities present serious and growing threats to U.S. national security interests. Chinese and Russian military doctrines also indicate that they view space as critical to modern warfare and consider the use of counterspace capabilities as both a means of reducing U.S. military effectiveness and for winning future wars.” — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, written testimony prior to his confirmation hearing. Space.com, March 19, 2021.

“The PRC continues to strengthen its military space capabilities, despite its public stance against the weaponization of space…. the PRC is developing electronic warfare capabilities such as satellite jammers….and China probably intends to pursue additional ASAT [Anti-Satellite] weapons capable of destroying satellites….” — Pentagon report about China’s military capabilities, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020.

Given the chance, China will also move ahead to use space to dominate not only the US but also the rest of the planet. Any defense budget cuts or flatlines in the in the US military budget — or any monetary transfers out of it — should be regarded as suicidal.

Shortly after becoming president in March 2013, Xi Jinping made his ambitions for China’s space power clear. “Developing the space program and turning the country into a space power is the space dream that we have continuously pursued”, he said. “The space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger”. China aims to become the world’s leading space power by 2045: “China will become an all-round world-leading country in space equipment and technology. By then, it will be able to carry out man-computer coordinated space exploration on a large scale,” wrote China Daily in 2017.

One cornerstone of China’s space program is the Beidou Navigation Satellite system (BDS), a global navigation satellite system that provides positioning, navigation and timing, in addition to data communication. The People’s Liberation Army created the program in order not to be dependent on the US-controlled GPS network. “In recent years, the PRC has actively sought to promote the image of Beidou as a civilian-led program intended primarily for commercial and scientific purposes,” stated a report by the Jamestown Foundation. “However, the program is under overall military direction, with the PLA in charge of Beidou’s senior-most program management organizations,”

Beidou is also known as China’s “Space Silk Road”, which expands China’s land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and sea-based “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” — better known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — into space. Beidou makes participants in the Belt and Road Initiative dependent on China for precision navigation and other space based services. According to a report by Malcolm Davis from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2017: