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Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum The U.N. resolution is a defining act of Obama’s Presidency.

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.

Earlier in the week, Egypt withdrew the Security Council resolution under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President-elect Donald Trump also intervened, speaking with Egypt’s government and, via Twitter, urging Mr. Obama to block the resolution, as have past U.S. Administrations and Mr. Obama himself in 2011.

As was widely reported Friday after the U.N. vote, the White House decided to abstain—thereby allowing the pro-Palestinian resolution to pass—in retaliation against the intervention by Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump.

Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known. Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.

It is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done.

No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.

Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

U.S. Allows U.N. to Censure Israel Obama administration, breaking tradition, clears way for measure; Donald Trump miffed at stance By Farnaz Fassihi and Carol E. Lee

UNITED NATIONS—The Obama administration broke from a longstanding tradition of U.S. defense of Israel at the U.N. and allowed the passage of a resolution harshly criticizing the country’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

It was the first time in 36 years the Security Council was able to adopt a resolution addressing the issue of Israeli settlement construction, an outcome made possible by the abstention of the U.S., which had veto power.

Throughout his tenure, President Barack Obama had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against expanding Israeli settlements in disputed lands, saying such construction poses an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. And throughout that time, he was rebuffed.

The measure on Friday was approved with 14 members voting in favor and the U.S. abstaining. That abstention, years in the making, marked what could be Mr. Obama’s final jab at an Israeli leader with whom he repeatedly clashed.

The vote followed days of extraordinary international political drama as Israel directly lobbied President-elect Donald Trump to intervene against the adoption of the resolution.

Mr. Trump and his transition team on Thursday held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Israeli officials. Egyptian officials originally drafted the resolution, but after the conversation between Messrs. Trump and Sisi, Egypt pulled the resolution from consideration a few hours before it was scheduled for a vote.

The move infuriated U.S. and European diplomats who saw the decision as the result of interference by Mr. Trump.

A somber Hanukkah-Christmas reminder: Ruthie Blum

It is sadly fitting that, for the first time since 1978, this year the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle coincides with Christmas Eve.

Though the two holidays have nothing in common, they are often lumped together. This is partly due to their proximity on the Gregorian calendar. It is also a period when Jewish and Christian students in the West are let out of school for what is now called “winter vacation,” with a lot of gift-giving and overeating taking place.

But this year, Jews and Christians would do well to embrace a deeper similarity, and say prayers for one another — even while some are drinking eggnog at the foot of lavishly decorated trees, while others are feasting on jelly donuts around lit candles.

Last year on Dec. 24, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi attended mass at St. Mark’s Orthodox Coptic Church in Cairo to show that things in his country were going to be different now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was no longer at the helm. This gesture, like el-Sissi’s strengthening ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was particularly significant in a region ravaged by full-fledged genocidal war and horrific low-resolution conflicts. The message he was trying to convey was that Egypt under his rule would treat its Christian minority with respect. In the months since then, he has also made moves to embrace his country’s treaty with the Jewish state, with which he shares the goal of fending off terrorists in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. Perhaps mystically, the last time Hanukkah and Christmas Eve fell on the same night occurred three months after the signing of the Camp David Accords, the precursor to that treaty.

El-Sissi’s efforts have not paid off too well on either front. At the Rio Olympic Games in August, though his government warned judoka Islam El Shehaby that if he did not compete against Israeli contender Or Sasson he would be stripped of his Egyptian citizenship, fellow countrymen from all walks of life urged him not to “shame Islam” by fighting Sasson, and afterward denounced him for sharing the mat with a Jew.

Also in the year since el-Sissi went to church, Islamist terrorists have continued, as before, to commit heinous acts of violence against the Copts. This month, during Sunday prayers at the very cathedral that el-Sissi visited in 2015, two dozen worshippers were killed and many more wounded when a bomb went off in the packed premises. Though there is still some confusion as to whether the mass murder was carried out by suicide bomber or a terrorist who laid the explosives near a pew, the Islamic State organization took happy credit for the snuffing out of the lives of innocent Christians, mostly women and children, and vowed to continue its annihilation of “apostates” everywhere.

El-Sissi announced that the suspected perpetrator was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who had established ties with a Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate.

Chanukah guide for the perplexed, 2016 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger see note please

This year Chanukah starts on December 24 in the evening and ends on the evening of January 1, 2017 . No one ever explains it better than retired ambassador Yoram Ettinger…rsk

1. Chanukah and Jewish immortality. In 1899, Mark Twain wrote: “Jews constitute but one percent of the human race…, [but] their contributions to literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are away out of proportion to the weakness of their numbers. They have made a marvelous fight in all the ages, and had done it with their hands tied behind them…. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians rose and then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed, made vast noise and they are gone…. The Jew saw them all, beat them all and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies…. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

2. The Chanukah Menorah (a nine-branched-candelabra) commemorates the legacy of the Maccabees, which has been a pillar of fire for the Jewish people, highlighting the prerequisites of spiritual and physical liberty, in defiance of formidable odds: faith, optimism, patriotism, memory and adherence to value and principle-driven culture. The Maccabees have become a universal role-model of national and religious liberation struggle against all odds, the victory of long-term, principle-driven faith over short-term, convenience-driven cynicism and opportunism; the victory of tenacious optimism over pessimism and political-correctness.

3. Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion: “The struggle of the Maccabees was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history…. The Maccabees overcame one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history due to the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment ….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953)

4. The US connection:

* On December 2, 1993, in Billings, Montana, white supremacists tossed a brick through a window of a Jewish home that displayed the Chanukah Menorah. On the following morning, the Billings Gazette – reflecting sentiments of local churches and civic leaders – printed a full-page Menorah, which was pasted on the windows of over 10,000 non-Jewish residents in a show of solidarity. Some Billings’ residents displayed their Not in Our Town spirit, displaying Chanukah Menorahs on Billings’ main street. The Billings’ Chanukah gesture has been commemorated annually. A Chanukah candle-lighting was recently held at the State Capitol in Helena, MT.

*A bust of Judah the Maccabee is displayed at West Point Military Academy, along with those of Joshua, David, Alexander the Great, Hector, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon – “the Nine Worthies.”

*John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Thomas Paine and the organizers of the Boston Tea Party were referred to as “the modern day Maccabees.”

* According to the Diary of Michael and Louisa Hart, George Washington was introduced to Chanukah in December 1777 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He was challenging the much superior British military. A Jewish solider lit a Chanukah candle, explaining its significance: a conviction-driven, tactical victory against immense odds. Washington replied: “I rejoice in the Maccabees’ success, though it is long past…It pleases me to think that miracles still happen.” On June 19, 1778, Washington implemented the battle tactics of Judah the Maccabee, defeating the British troops.

The Saudis at the UN Human Rights Council by Giulio Meotti

While the medieval Saudi system of justice was flogging the gentle blogger Raif Badawi 50 out of the stipulated 1000 lashes, a delegation of UN bureaucrats landed in Jeddah to promote an international conference on religious freedom.

The Saudis use these international seats to advance their oppressive agenda, and to press the Western democracies to punish criticism of Islam.

Through the shameful trial of Geert Wilders, Dutch authorities sent a message of surrender to the Saudis and other rogue Islamic regimes that punish dissent.

Did the Dutch prosecute Wilders on behalf of the Saudis, who threatened to impose sanctions on the Netherlands?

The UN and the Western democracies are putting the defense of human rights and freedom in the hands of one the world’s worst violators of religious and intellectual freedom.

Sharia courts are already fully operating in the Netherlands. They know something about “human rights”: stoning, flogging and chopping off heads.

Who will rescue our right to speak?

“My husband has been languishing in a Saudi prison since June 17th, 2012. Our children live with me in the city of Sherbrooke, Québec in Canada. They have not seen their father for five years now… On January 9, 2015, Raif received the first 50 lashes… Will members of the United Nations Human Rights Council join the European Parliament and ask for Raif’s release?”

Unfortunately, the UN members did not respond to this appeal by Ensaf Haidar, the fearless wife of the most famous blogger of the Arab world, the gentle Raif Badawi, imprisoned and flogged by the Saudis for his secular ideas. A few days after Ensaf’s appeal, the United Nations welcomed Badawi’s executioners, the Saudis, at the UN Human Rights Council. The Saudi representative, Abdulaziz Alwasil, will be decisive on three major issues at the UN Palace of Nations in Geneva: women, religious freedom and the system of justice.

What a great achievement for Saudi Arabia: The country flogs poets and bloggers, and its sheikhs have no other concern than filling their sumptuous palaces with wives and concubines, and then stoning them to death if they become “adulterous”. Saudi Arabia is where a Shiite cleric was publicly beheaded and where a Christian cannot wear a tunic or a cross.

The British government supported the Saudi bid to be re-elected at the Human Rights Council (British Prime Minister Theresa May was urged in vain to oppose the Saudi election to the Geneva body). The Obama Administration did the same: Samantha Powers, the U.S. ambassador at the UN, called the Saudi bid at the UN a “procedural position”.

Europe’s Compassionate Hatred of Israel by Bat Ye’or

The Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

But what does this declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists? Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

Where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

European countries recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”.

This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions. We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 — and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid.

The Venice Declaration of 1980 was a gift from the European Community to the Arab League, aimed at reestablishing good economic relations with Arab countries, which had been angered by the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, a peace Europe had not been able to prevent. Jewish holy sites and the survival of the Jewish State were sacrificed by the European Community in exchange for petrodollars.

Since that time, the European Union has expressed remorse for the Holocaust and love and compassion for Israel, but has continued to support, fund and encourage a population whose mission is the destruction of Israel, as proclaimed in its doctrine, and with which Europe is quite familiar. European countries zealously spend billions to promote a worldwide Palestinian campaign of hatred against the State of Israel. They recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists, whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”. The so-called “Jewish occupation” of Judea and Samaria refers to land that was conquered by war and occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and from where Palestinian Jews were killed, or dispossessed and expelled.

Peter Smith A Fog of Generalised Imbecility

Many of what pass these days for mature adults believe the views of sixteen-year-olds are worth taking into account, and why wouldn’t they? Their own views are baseless invocations of ideas blowing in the wind, therefore no more valid than those of callow youths.
Ever have annoying experiences? Well, of course we all do. I have more these days because I get annoyed by MSM commentators, even by the dwindling number of conservatives. No-one can tell me that the quality of commentary has improved in the past thirty to forty years. I don’t know why precisely. Perhaps it is the fault of post-modern education which, so I understand, encourages barely-formed minds to have views instead of concentrating on absorbing building blocks for rational thinking.

I am glad to say that when I was sixteen I had no views at all. My recollection is that having views was not encouraged. Every mature adult knew that the views of a sixteen-year-old were worthless. Now views have supplanted building blocks. They are, if you like, anchorless views. Accordingly, the new breed of mature adults thinks that the views of sixteen-year-olds are worth taking into account. Why wouldn’t they? Their own views are baseless invocations of ideas blowing in the wind and therefore no more valid than those of callow youths.

The manifestation of this trend towards generalised imbecility is what I call foggy thinking. I was in quite a few ‘pea-soupers’ when growing up in England. You simply couldn’t see a metre in front or behind you. I can only assume that pea soup has crept into commentators’ cranial cavities.

The number of deaths from guns dwarfs deaths from terrorist attacks in the US we are regularly told by left-wing commentators. Juan Williams on Fox News is the latest I have heard spouting this guff during a discussion of the Islamic massacre in Berlin. Quite honestly, what are we supposed to take from this kind of comment?

Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) spoofed it brilliantly in Quadrant a little time ago. I recall he suggested that Britain in WWII might have been better served concentrating on reducing heart attacks than on countering the blitz, which took far fewer lives.

A related topic that generally has me weeping in frustration is the thought, often propagated by conservative commentators, that it is extremely difficult to identify the few among Muslim migrants who might do us physical harm. The implication is that if ‘extreme vetting’ worked it would be fine to allow Western societies to be inundated by ‘peace-loving’ Muslims. No, it wouldn’t, dummies!

The Devil is a novice. His biggest trick is to convince us that he doesn’t exist. In the face of survey after survey showing religious and social intolerance among Muslim communities most everywhere and in the face of supposedly democratic Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan wanting to punish and execute their citizens for insulting Islam, apparently the vast majority of Muslims are fine and dandy. And this narrative gains strength after each horrific Islamic terrorist massacre. What a trick!

Here we have subscribers to a supremacist, intolerant and violent creed being given a pass because only a relative few (tens of thousands, or is it more?) of their number out of 1.6 billion are monstrous literalists. Well, these monsters could not and do not emerge from a vacuum. They are a product of their creed; a vile excretion from the mass of subscribers.

Black Klansmen, fascist follicles By Roger Franklin

In the Age and Sydney Morning Herald today, remaining readers of those publications will have preconceptions further confirmed that Donald Trump is a Hitlerian svengali whose election has invited the brown-shirted “far right” to goose-step through the corridors of power. The report, picked up from the Washington Post, begins by noting that “a small but determined” band of neo-Nazis in Michigan has stopped flaunting swastikas in an effort to go “more mainstream”. This in turn prompts a journalistic round-up of the Left’s handy and standard boogeymen — the Klan, David Duke, backwoods militias and, if you can believe it, people who wear their hair “in an undercut style once popular among the Hitler Youth”.

Nazi haircuts! What more proof could anyone demand?

Need it be said that the story is piffle, that it is part of an emerging narrative intent on framing the next four years as a period that will see the politically correct tirelessly encouraged to denounce tax cuts and any easing of the regulatory straitjacket as the moral equivalents of invading Poland? You would need to be supremely dim to give such a slur any credence, which explains why Fairfax editors published it.

Trouble is, the jackbooted legions whose hatred is said be soiling America’s fruited plain are an uncooperative lot, as Fairfax US correspondent Paul McGeough will have to admit if he ever gets around to correcting a pre-election report that appeared beneath his byline on November 3. The multi-Walkley winner informed his readers:

“Vote Trump” was spray-painted on the ruins of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, 160 kilometres north-west of Jackson, overnight on Tuesday. Local fire chief Ruben Brown said the church was badly damaged but no injuries have been reported.

Coinciding with the Ku Klux Klan’s endorsement of Donald Trump in a campaign that has become overtly racist, the attack kindles fears of a return to the 1960s civil rights unrest, when southern black churches were often torched or bombed by white supremacists.

It’s a minor quibble that McGeough preferred to generalise about “white supremacists”, rather than identify the church-burners of long ago for the segregationist Southern Democrats they really were. So let that omission pass and focus instead on the real problem with his bid to tie Trump to the Klan: it wasn’t white men in pointy hoods who burnt that Mississippi church. According to the state police, it was a black congregant — that’s his mugshot atop this post — who set the fire, presumably in hope of prompting some pro-Clinton votes and publicity.

Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain says Andrew McClinton of Leland, Mississippi, who is African-American, is charged with first-degree arson of a place of worship.

It would be nice to think McGeough’s editors will publish a retraction, that they are keen to set the record straight. And while they’re at it, they might take a close look at another of his dispatches which alleged a wave of attacks by racists celebrating Trump’s victory. Yes, there have been many reports of Trump-inspired racist assaults — and it seems, as even the Washington Post concedes, more than a few were false-flag hoaxes.

Israel Lobbied Trump to Help Derail U.N. Resolution Development pits an incoming administration directly against the sitting president; resolution’s sponsor, Egypt, postpones vote after Sisi and Trump spoke By Jay Solomon, Rory Jones and Farnaz Fassihi

Israeli government officials requested that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump intervene in deliberations at the United Nations focused on passing a new resolution on the Arab-Israel conflict, thrusting him into the center of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts even before taking office, according to Israeli officials briefed on the discussions.

Top Israeli officials had come to believe that the Obama administration wasn’t going to block a U.N. resolution that seeks to define Israeli construction in disputed territories as “illegal” when the measure came up for a scheduled vote by the Security Council on Thursday, according to the officials.

Instead, they turned to the incoming president, who has staked out positions more favorable to conservative Israelis and at odds with Palestinians.

Mr. Trump responded Thursday morning by issuing a Twitter message calling for U.S. opposition to the U.N. resolution. He also held a phone conversation with Egypt’s President Abel Fatah al-Sisi, whose government had drafted the U.N. resolution. Cairo proceeded on Thursday to call for a delay on the vote.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition team said Mr. Sisi initiated the call. Transition officials didn’t respond to questions about Israeli government contacts.

Obama administration officials declined to comment on how it would have voted on the U.N. resolution. State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed that Secretary of State John Kerry talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday morning.

Palestinians and their allies favor a resolution such as the one that was under consideration, and may yet push for another vote on the measure. But the unusual developments Thursday, pitting an incoming administration directly against the sitting president, accentuates the uneasiness in the U.S. political transition, particularly on such a key foreign-policy issue.

In Mr. Obama’s final year in office, the White House has considered ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and in recent months has considered supporting a U.N. resolution, according to White House officials.

Mr. Trump is expected to significantly shift U.S. policy on Israel, condoning the construction of settlements in disputed areas and proposing the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.

Egyptian officials said that the phone call between Messrs. Sisi and Trump was the start of a new, U.S.-led approach in the Middle East.

“They have agreed to lay the groundwork for the new administration to drive the establishment of a true peace between the Arabs and the Israelis,” an Egyptian official said. “Moreover, President-elect Trump strongly supports the Egyptian leaders efforts to seek a satisfactory resolution to the issues across the Middle East.”

In his Twitter message about the U.N. resolution, Mr. Trump held to one longstanding tenet of U.S. policy—that any agreement must be decided by Israelis and Palestinians. CONTINUE AT SITE

Australia Disrupts ‘Terrorist Plot’ Timed for Christmas, Prime Minister Says Seven people arrested; explosive devices were planned for Melbourne By Rhiannon Hoyle and Rob Taylor

CANBERRA, Australia—Authorities said they disrupted a terrorist plot inspired by Islamic State to explode improvised bombs in central Melbourne on or around Christmas Day, with a railway station and a cathedral among the suspected targets.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said seven people were arrested, of whom five were expected to be charged over the plot. The plan allegedly involved the use of several improvised explosive devices, and a senior police chief said the accused plotters may have planned to use other weapons as well, including knives and a firearm.

Authorities alleged the suspects had scouted popular sites in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city and home to some 4 million people, as possible targets. The locations included the centrally located Flinders Street train station, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Federation Square, a popular riverside gathering place.

Mr. Turnbull called it “one of the most substantial terrorist plots” of recent years.

After a truck earlier this week plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring about 50 others, the Australian government ordered intensified security arrangements ahead of the Christmas and New Year celebrations, with state and national police on guard against a similar attack. Sydney holds large New Year fireworks celebrations each year, usually attracting more than a million people.

In the predawn hours of Friday, counterterrorism police raided several Melbourne buildings and arrested six men and one woman. Five of the men, all in their 20s, were expected to face charges including “acts in preparation of a terrorist event.”

Three appeared in a Melbourne court Friday, aged between 21 and 26, while two others were expected to face a judge on Saturday.

Australia’s five-tier terrorism threat alert system has been set at “probable,” the third-highest level, since September 2014. In December of that year, a lone gunman, later identified as Iranian immigrant Man Haron Monis, took over a central Sydney cafe and held numerous people hostage for 16 hours before police killed the gunman to end the siege. Two hostages—the cafe’s manager and a female customer—also died.

Since then there have been four attacks and 12 others disrupted. In September this year, police charged a 22-year-old man with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder after he allegedly stabbed another man multiple times in Sydney. In total, 57 people have been charged with terrorism-related offenses, Mr. Turnbull said. CONTINUE AT SITE