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Toward a Transformational Peace in the Middle East by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16538/middle-east-transformational-peace

Both Arab countries and Israel will benefit immensely.

Palestinian leaders are suddenly discovering that, as the Arab saying goes, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on” – possibly without them.

“We [realists] understand that only defeat will convince Palestinians like Mrs. Ashrawi, and through them Iranian, Turkish, Islamist, leftist, fascist, and other anti-Zionists, that the century-plus conflict is over, that Israel has prevailed, and that the time has come to give up on futile, painful, and genocidal ambitions.” — Daniel Pipes, Middle East Scholar.

If President Trump is able to continue following the bold, unconventional path he has traced, he will most likely succeed where all his predecessors have failed. What he has accomplished already — in less than four years, with so many forces determined to undermine him… is extraordinary.

“Trump has done more for peace in the Middle East in four years than any other American President in seventy-two years.” — Meyer Habib, member of the French National Assembly, i24 News, September 14, 2020.

On September 15, two peace agreements with Israel and known as The Abraham Accords – one with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one with Bahrain, and — were made official at a White House ceremony. President Donald J. Trump spoke of a “historic breakthrough” and a “previously unthinkable regional transformation”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added that the world is witnessing “the dawn of a new Middle East “.

The agreements, which come 26 years after the last peace treaty, between Jordan and Israel, mark a further step towards the integration of Israel in the region.

The UAE and Bahrain are the first Arab countries to recognize Israel without requiring any concession from Israel (Netanyahu said that the extension of Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea-Samaria and the Jordan Valley was suspended, not canceled) and without any American financial contribution involved.

Pakistani Attacks Charlie Hebdo Workers w/Meat Cleaver Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/09/pakistani-attacks-charlie-hebdo-workers-wmeat-daniel-greenfield/

The Religion of Peace would like to remind you that it’s still lethal even while everyone’s focused on a virus.

A man armed with a meat cleaver attacked and wounded two people on Friday who had stepped out for a cigarette in front of the Paris office building where Islamist militants gunned down employees of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo five years ago.

Police detained the man suspected of carrying out the attack soon after with bloodstains on his clothes next to the steps of an opera house about 500 metres (yards) away.

French officials said the attack was terrorism. A police source told Reuters the suspect was 18 years of age and of Pakistani origin.

A second suspect was detained and prosecutors were trying to establish his relation to the knife attacker. The second man is Algerian, according to the police source.

The staff of the magazine issued a statement expressing their support for the victims of Friday’s attack. “Far from terrorising us, such events should make us even more assertive in the defence of our values,” the statement said.

Pakistani and Algerian. Nothing to do with religion then.

 According to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, however, there is little doubt: “clearly it is an act of Islamist terrorism “, the minister said on France 2 this Friday evening.

The French can actually say the “I” word.

Meanwhile, these days, American conservatives want a medal for saying, “Radical Islamic terrorism” as if there are “moderate Islamic terrorists” to distinguish them for.

He was arrested a month ago “for carrying a prohibited weapon”, a “screwdriver”, when he was “still a minor”.

I presume we’ll shortly be saturated with claims that…

1. He suffered from mental illness

2. Was on drugs

3. Was entrapped by police

4. Was reacting to racism and economic oppression

… the 4 usual claims made by the pro-terror lobby in and out of the media.

A Tale of Two Chinese Economies Beijing is promoting export-led growth as the domestic recovery lags.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-chinese-economies-11601075108?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Investors around the world appear to be taking comfort in the revival of China’s economy, but the question has to be which Chinese economy they’re watching. There are two, and Beijing is subsidizing growth in the wrong one.

Look beyond encouraging data such as the second quarter’s above-3% GDP growth, and what’s reviving is the export-and-government-driven manufacturing economy. As of August, manufacturing investment is positive again and this is driving industrial production and exports.

But the Chinese economy comprised of household consumers—ordinary Chinese people—is stuck in the doldrums. The unemployment rate is falling, to 5.6% in August. But this measures only some urban workers, and the true level of unemployment and underemployment almost certainly is much higher. The best reason for optimism is that consumer spending perked up in August. This was mostly concentrated in luxury goods, however—and in China stockpiling jewelry and handbags constitutes a form of saving.

The explanation for this divergence is straightforward, as Kevin Rudd and Daniel Rosen explained recently in these pages. President Xi Jinping still talks a good game about economic reform, but he has all but abandoned many of the overhauls his predecessors attempted. In the broadest terms, China no longer seeks to attract a wide variety of foreign investment as a path toward higher productivity and more economic opportunities.

Instead, since the 2008 financial panic and especially since Mr. Xi took power in 2012, Beijing has relied on debt-fueled stimulus of manufacturers and local governments to avert recessions. The trend is pronounced in the months since the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

The ‘Peace Processoriat’ Was Wrong for Many Reasons-Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

First, “land for peace” was never viable. The Palestinian goal was presumed to be “land” and Israel’s was “peace.” But “peace” is not a negotiable property.

When a key member of the professional Middle East peace processoriat acknowledges that his community might have, in fact, been wrong, it is worthwhile to read what he has to say. But in his article “Arab-Israeli progress seemed impossible. That’s because of old assumptions,” Aaron David Miller misses the mark.

In his view, “For decades, a core assumption of many, if not most American foreign policy thinkers has been that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was a veritable powder keg that could blow at any time, creating war and instability in the Arab world.” Therefore, Palestinians first; Arab states after. He explains how the current administration simply bypassed the Palestinians and, therefore, “This doesn’t mean the Arab-Israeli conflict is over or that Israel has untethered itself from a dispute with Palestinians that could profoundly shape its character, demography and security—the Israeli and Palestinian futures are inextricably linked.”

Perhaps. The Palestinians certainly should have a role in their own future when they are ready, but it isn’t wrong of the other regional players to move without them. The problems, though, are more (and bigger) than the order of events.

First, “land for peace” was never viable. The Palestinian goal was presumed to be “land” and Israel’s was “peace.” But “peace” is not a negotiable property; a historian called it, “The condition imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war.” The “peace” of Versailles contained the seeds of World War II; the “peace” of 1945 contained the seeds of a democratic Germany and Japan but consigned millions to almost a half-century of Soviet-dominated communism. Peace emerges, if at all, only after the resolution of competing claims, whether through negotiation or war. World War II ended when the allies were in Berlin and Hitler was dead in the bunker. The Cold War ended when Soviet satellites were freed from Moscow’s grip and communism died.

Serbia and Israel: The triumphs and tragedies of two nations The failure to withstand supremacist Islam is dhimmitude or death By Victor Sharpe see note please

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/200924

The President of Kosovo is  Hashim Thaci who was  indicted in late June for war crimes and crimes against humanity by a special tribunal investigating the 1998-1999 conflict with Serbia. When Thaci was Prime Minister of Kosovo,he was accused of being the “boss” of a “network of unlawful activity,” which included prisoner abuse and organ harvesting. rsk

Serbia’s troubles with Kosovo parallel Israel’s problems with the terrorist Palestinian Authority. It is very fitting that Serbia and Israel should have political, economic and cultural ties as the similarities between each of the embattled nations are considerable and significant in historical terms. Like the ancient Land of Israel and the modern Jewish state of Israel, Serbia has a magnificent yet tragic history. Both peoples have suffered from Islamic threats, aggression and an uncaring and, too often, hostile world as during World War 2.

In the 14th century, the Byzantine Empire began to crumble, finally falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. But in 1389, the Ottoman Turkish sultan, Murad, had begun to lead his Muslim horde against the armies of the Serbian Christian prince Lazar.

Prince Lazar had already been active in resisting increasing Muslim raids against Christian lands in the Balkans and the place chosen to make a stand against the Turks was at Kosovo Polje (the Field of Blackbirds) – the heartland of the Serbian nation. It was in June, 1389, on St. Vitus Day, (Vidovdan), that the rival forces met. The battle began at first with Serbian successes and the great Serbian hero, Milos Obilic, killed the Muslim sultan, Murad. For a while the Turks were in disarray but they managed to recover and by sheer weight of numbers ground down and finally defeated the Serbian army.

Thus began 500 years of Christian suffering under the Muslim yoke

It was not a mere military defeat but the end of Serbian independence. But worse still, the Serbian heartland of Kosovo was lost. For the Serbian people, the blood shed at the Battle of Kosovo in the Field of Blackbirds marks Kosovo as eternally Serbian.

Hezbollah’s Growing Terror Network in Europe by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16549/hezbollah-network-europe

According to Nathan Sales, the U.S. State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Hezbollah has been steadily building up its weapons stockpiles in Europe with the aim of preparing for any future acts of terrorism that may be ordered by Tehran.

Describing Hezbollah’s arms build-up in Europe as posing a “clear and present danger to the US” and its allies, Mr Sales said that US intelligence reports showed that Hezbollah had weapons based in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, while “significant” ammonium nitrate caches had either been discovered or destroyed in France, Greece and Italy.

Further evidence of Hezbollah’s expanding terrorist presence in Europe has emerged in Ireland, where ten members of an Irish dissident group known as the New IRA (NIRA) were arrested on terrorism charges last month, following claims they met with Hezbollah officials at Iran’s embassy in Dublin.

At a time when tensions are increasing between Iran and the West over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme, the expansion of Hezbollah’s terror operation in Europe should certainly be a major cause for concern. Iran, after all, has a long history of resorting to terrorism to put pressure on its adversaries, and Europe is an obvious target for future Iranian terror attacks.

The conviction in absentia of two terrorists with links to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia for murdering five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012 has shed new light on the organisation’s expanding terror network in Europe.

The convictions, which were announced earlier this week by the Specialised Criminal Court in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, relate to a suicide bomb attack against a bus carrying Israeli tourists on July 18, 2012.

The attack took place at the airport in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Burgas, killing five Israelis, as well as the bus driver.

Bulgarian investigators subsequently identified two prime suspects in the case, Meliad Farah, a Lebanese-Australian, and Hassan El Hajj Hassan, a Lebanese-Canadian, whom they claimed carried out the attack on behalf of Hezbollah.

While Hezbollah has consistently denied any involvement in the murders, the court nevertheless found the two men guilty of the attack, and sentenced them to life imprisonment without parole.

As the whereabouts of the convicted men is unknown, they are unlikely ever to serve their sentences. The evidence uncovered by Bulgarian prosecutors, however, pointing to Hezbollah’s involvement in the attack has been sufficient to persuade European Union officials to place the organisation’s so-called military wing on its terrorism blacklist.

When Conventional Wisdom Gets Downright Dangerous By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/when-conventional-wisdom-gets-downright-dangerous/?utm_source=

T he problem with conventional wisdom is not that it is always wrong. The rub is that the majority of “experts” unthinkingly and habitually mouth its validity until they ensure that it becomes static, unchanging, and immune from reexamination and dissent — an intolerant religious orthodoxy that finally become dangerous.

The recent Middle East breakthroughs are a perfect example. Both the Obama and Trump administrations sought quite different ways of navigating through the nearly 75-year-old “Middle East problem,” usually framed as the Israeli–“Palestinian” question.

Obama, in radical fashion, sought to empower and elevate Iran. The so-called Iran deal, the dropping of sanctions, the nocturnal infusions of cash, the exemptions for clear violations of the deal’s protocols, the nefarious work of Hezbollah — all that and more was excused on the theory that a growing Persian Shiite Iranian nexus from Tehran to the Mediterranean was inevitable and would “balance” both Israel and the so-called moderate Sunni Arab states. That realignment might prevent a Middle East war and end the leverage of America’s former Arab allies and Israel over us.

What destroyed the fantasy was not just its sheer idiocy — ensuring that a revolutionary, anti-Western theocracy would soon get nuclear weapons and become “moderate” while empowering its terrorist minions in their destructive agendas in Syria, Lebanon, and the Gulf states, as well as Europe and Latin America.

Instead, we see the futility of embracing Iran in its corollary — the old saw that the Palestinians were still central to the Obama administration’s gambit. That is, an empowered Iran, as the self-described revolutionary and chief patron of the Palestinians, would use its new clout to pressure Israel to offer concessions to the Palestinians, without any corresponding recognition of the Jewish state or reduction in Palestinians’ anti-Zionist bellicosity.

The Arab world then would be forced to rival Iran to regain its anti-Israel credentials, further bolstering the power-broking ability of the much-courted Palestinians. Eventually, Israel would concede and usher in a defiant and completely autonomous West Bank nation. Palestine Inc. would then reciprocate Israeli magnanimity by concluding peace with the Jewish state now confined within its 1967 borders. And so Middle East peace would reign.

Amid coronavirus, this year’s Yom Kippur is another kind of war Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/amid-coronavirus-this-years-yom-kippur-is-another-kind-of-war-643482

Most of the country is focused on the current battle against the COVID-19 pandemic – or, rather, on the fever-pitch fighting within the government about how to curb the alarming rise in morbidity.
For the first time in decades, the Israeli press is not devoting the lead-up to the Day of Atonement with stories about and lessons learned from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. 

Instead, the bulk of the news and accompanying analysis is focused on the current battle against the COVID-19 pandemic – or, rather, on the fever-pitch fighting within the government about how to curb the alarming rise in morbidity and fatality rates.
Unlike other issues at the root of major rifts between politicians and the sectors that they supposedly represent, however, this one seems to have no clear camps. And, as Israelis are used to having actual enemies to confront – either with swords or pens – the debate over coronavirus closures has been causing great confusion. 

Indeed, though by this point there is wide consensus that the situation is dire, there has been little agreement, even among medical professionals, on how to reverse the worrisome trend. To make matters even more complicated, the same experts and lawmakers have shifted their positions. 

Much of the public responded to the flip-flops and arbitrary directives by ignoring them completely or by looking for loopholes. This triggered others to feel like patsies and follow suit.

Finally, after days of deliberations – following a semi-lockdown during the past week that was barely enforced – the coronavirus cabinet decided on a complete nationwide lockdown, to begin Friday and last at least until the end of the Jewish holidays in October.

Turkey: Erdoğan’s Soft Spot for Hamas by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16449/turkey-erdogan-hamas

So far, Erdoğan’s fanaticism has come without any cost to him internationally, or any damage to his domestic political survivability. He has every ideological and pragmatic reason to keep up his love affair with Hamas.

Erdoğan seemingly loves to make such gatherings [with Hamas terrorist leaders] public to challenge the parts of the world that designate Hamas as a terrorist entity: the EU, Israel and the United States. There is also a message to his Turkish audience: I challenge the world powers, including America, and I remain untouchable.

“In overlooking these designations and thousands of its victims, who were injured and murdered by Hamas terrorists, Turkey is actively supporting it both financially and logistically.” — Spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Fox News, August 28, 2020.

In reality, it is equally possible that these developments might actually spur a two-state solution, by notifying the Palestinians that, as the Arab saying goes, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”

It is not only ideological and not only pragmatic: it is both: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comes from the ranks of militant Islamism for which the “Palestinian cause” is sacred and “as national as any other national matter.” His love for Hamas and his dedication to the “cause” are genuine. So is his pragmatism.

Erdoğan’s pro-Hamas (and anti-Israeli) fanaticism is one reason why Islamist Turks vote for him. So far, his fanaticism has come without any cost to him internationally, or any damage to his domestic political survivability. He has every ideological and pragmatic reason to keep up his love affair with Hamas.

How Trump Changed the World By defying conventional wisdom on the Middle East and China, he reshaped both political parties. Matthew Continetti

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/how-trump-changed-world-matthew-continetti/

On Sept. 16 the editorial board of the New York Times did the impossible. It said something nice about President Trump. “The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development,” the editors wrote. They even went so far as to say that the “Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it.” I had to read that sentence twice to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps the world really is ending.

Or perhaps the Times cannot avoid the reality that the “Abraham Accords” between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain are a historic achievement. It is the first advance toward peace in the Middle East since Israel signed a treaty with Jordan in 1994. By exposing the intransigence and corruption of the Palestinian authorities, and thereby removing them from the diplomatic equation, the Trump administration reestablished the “peace process” as a negotiation between states. And because the states in the region face a common foe—Iran—they have every incentive to band together. This is textbook realpolitik. The world is better off for it.

Just as remarkable as the deal itself is the bipartisan applause that greeted it in the United States. No one needs reminding that domestic politics is polarized and paranoid. Each party is convinced that the other one will extinguish democracy at the first opportunity. The past three presidencies have been jarringly discontinuous in style, temperament, and policy. But the same Democrats who sometimes appear eager to remove Donald Trump from office by any means necessary treated this foreign policy accomplishment with equanimity and acquiescence. “It is good to see others in the Middle East recognizing Israel and even welcoming it as a partner,” Biden said in a statement, adding that “a Biden-Harris administration will build on these steps.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told Jewish Insider that the agreement is “a very positive thing.”