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FOREIGN POLICY

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Biden’s Deceptive Acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide Why his vow “never again” rings hollow. David Boyajian

By on June 2nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/what-lies-beneath-bidens-deceptive-acknowledgment-david-boyajian/

Joe Biden’s April 24 statement acknowledging the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923+) carried out by Turkey was welcome, but flawed. Indeed, “Turkey” appears nowhere in the document. Moreover, the State Department swiftly undermined Biden’s virtuous-sounding words.

American acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide isn’t even new. The U.S. House has passed several resolutions on the Genocide. And a nearly unanimous Congress did so in 2019.

Presidents going back to Woodrow Wilson have described the Armenian ordeals with language such as: an effort to exterminate all Armenians; terrible massacres; mass killings; death marches; and an ancient [Armenian] homeland was erased. If these don’t describe genocide, the word is meaningless.

In 1951, the State Department cited the Armenian “massacres [as a] crime of genocide” in a filing at the International Court of Justice. In 1981, President Reagan included “the genocide of Armenians” in a Holocaust proclamation.

Genocide acknowledgments should not — like car insurance — lapse if not renewed annually. Will the Holocaust become a non-genocide next year if the White House happens to overlook it?

Still, the president’s statement is noteworthy. It could even reinvigorate several Armenian American lawsuits against Turkey. But the statement has problems.

It tries to take the heat off today’s Republic of Turkey by blaming only “Ottoman-era … authorities” for the Genocide.

After the Allies defeated Ottoman Turkey in WWI (1918), Ottoman General Mustafa Kemal’s (Ataturk) forces continued to massacre Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Kemal also ordered that Armenia be “politically and physically eliminated.” When he established the Turkish Republic in 1923, Kemal appointed Ottoman genocidists and continued to persecute Christians.

Thus, as President Erdogan himself has confirmed, his country is a “continuation” of Ottoman Turkey. Knowing this, the Turkish Republic has always tried to evade accountability for the Genocide.

Disgracefully, though, Biden tries to assist Turkey in that regard by writing, “We do this not to cast blame” [on Turkey].” The president has no right to hand Turkey a “Get Out of Jail Free card.”

Just two days later, American Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy tried to help Turkey duck accountability. “The Armenian Genocide took place in 1915, the [UN] Genocide Convention did not come into force until 1951 … from the legal perspective the Convention is not being applied retroactively.”

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Biden Administration Rewards Terrorists: Abbas and Hamas by Bassam Tawil

By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17413/biden-administration-rewards-terrorists-abbas

Ironically, the same Abbas who told Blinken that he (Abbas) is committed to a peace process with Israel is the same Abbas who also wants to see his Israeli “peace partners” put on trial at the ICC.
Now comes Blinken and announces that the reopening of the consulate in the city. Here is how the Palestinians understand his gestures: If you fire 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel, you get a US embassy in Jerusalem and millions of dollars of US taxpayer money. It works! The solution, then, is to keep on doing it!
By reopening the consulate, Blinken is telling both Hamas and Abbas that the US does not recognize Jerusalem as the united and undivided capital of Israel.
Blinken has also sent a message to Abbas and Hamas that former US President Donald Trump’s formula of “peace for peace” in the Middle East is off the table; they no longer need to worry.
Abbas and Hamas are rubbing their hands because, the way they see it, the Biden administration has just achieved their goal of scrapping Trump’s peace plan, “Peace to Prosperity: A vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
By rewarding Abbas, Hamas and the anti-normalization camp in the Arab world, the Biden administration has bludgeoned its declared objective of reviving a peace process in the Middle East. It has demonstrated decisively that corruption and dictatorship pay. It has shown that terrorism pays – to the tune of millions of dollars. Palestinian incitement and violence against Israel are unlikely to recede in the context of such an encouraging outcome.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s May 25 announcement that the Biden administration will ask Congress to allocate $75 million in aid to the Palestinians and that Washington will reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem — which previously had served as a de facto embassy handling US relations with the Palestinians — is sending the wrong message to the leaders of the Palestinians.

First, these overtures signal Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the US will support and lavish funding on any Arab leader who seriously abuses not only his own people but also his neighbors. This policy would also include leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Xinping in China and Supreme Guide Ali Kamenei in Iran, as well as other despots.

One pretext for the war that Hamas initiated was that Abbas had cancelled parliamentary elections to have been held this month and July. The real reason the elections were canceled was that they would have resulted in another victory for Hamas.

Hamas won the last parliamentary election in 2006 due to the Palestinians’ frustration over the rampant political, administrative and economic corruption in Fatah, the dominant faction of Abbas’s PA.

The Biden administration — by offering Abbas more money and reopening the US diplomatic mission that deals directly with the Palestinians — is actually rewarding Abbas for those attributes.

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Diplomats Abase America The State Department is supposed to advance U.S. interests and burnish the country’s image abroad. By Dave Seminara

By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/diplomats-abase-america-11622494456?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

American diplomats take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. A foreign-service officer’s job is to advance American interests. But officials are now asking diplomats to function as social-justice warriors to the detriment of the country’s image abroad, as revealed by a leaked State Department cable encouraging embassies and consulates to fly Black Lives Matter flags.

Nearly 20 years ago, when I was sworn in as a foreign-service officer by Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said: “The most important of all the jobs that we are sending you out to do is to take with you the value system of the American people.” BLM’s values are shared by only half the country, if that, according to a recent USA Today/Ipsos poll. Another USA Today survey indicated that only 18% of Americans and 28% of blacks support the group’s signature goal, defunding the police.

Yet from reading the State Department’s May 21 cable, you’d think the country is in lockstep agreement. The cable asserts that protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing “sparked a movement to confront systems perpetuating deep-seated inequities rooted in colonialism and the oppression of racial, tribal, ethnic, and other minority communities.” It continues: “Mr. Floyd’s murder prompted an international outcry to seek racial justice and equity by dismantling systemic racism and eradicating police brutality affecting communities of color, most acutely, people of African descent.” The missive asserted that federal law allows diplomats to “engage in BLM-related activity while on duty or in the workplace” but not to combine such advocacy with “political activity.”

That’s doublespeak. BLM activity is political advocacy. The group’s co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is a self-described Marxist. Until recently, BLM’s website called on “comrades” to make efforts at “dismantling cisgender privilege and heteronormative thinking” and “disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”

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Blinken and a Repeat of ‘Eyeless in Gaza’ Saga by Amir Taheri

By on May 30th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17417/gaza-iran-blinken

Ali Khamenei asserts that he has received “a divine pledge that total victory is on the way”, and demands that the two groups continue the fight until “our holy land is cleansed of the existence of the usurper”.

The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claims that Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and missiles could now reach 75 percent of the Israeli territory. The aim now is to increase that to 100 percent which, if combined with the Lebanese Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenals, could pave the way for the “total victory” that Khamenei demands.

In other words, at least part of the misery that Gazans suffer is due to the no-holds-barred civil war between Fatah and Islamist Jihadis led by Hamas.

The “urgent aid package” that Khamenei promises includes none of those things. The “Supreme Guide” couldn’t care less how Gazans live or die; he is only interested in how many rockets and missiles they can launch against Israel, providing him with a bunker to boast about and hide the fundamental weakness of his shaky regime.

What if Gazans don’t want their tiny chunk of God’s earth to be a bunker for foreign potentates in search of cut-price glory…?

Blinken should not throw money where it ends up in the hands of Hamas, which pursues jihad as part of a global terror organization.

“The advanced bunker of the Resistance Front”. This is how official media in Tehran describe the Gaza Strip as it emerges from its latest mini-war against “The Zionist enemy”. Needless to say, Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, regarding himself as leader of the “Resistance Front,” is already looking forward to the next round of this sordid duel. In messages to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and Ziyad Nakhalah of the Islamic Jihad for the liberation of Palestine, “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei asserts that he has received “a divine pledge that total victory is on the way”, and demands that the two groups continue the fight until “our holy land is cleansed of the existence of the usurper”.

Tehran media claim that “the great victory” supposedly achieved by Hamas and Islamic Jihad is, to a large extent, due to financial, material and training support from the Islamic Republic.

The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claims that Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and missiles could now reach 75 percent of the Israeli territory. The aim now is to increase that to 100 percent which, if combined with the Lebanese Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenals, could pave the way for the “total victory” that Khamenei demands.

Last January, the “Supreme Guide” ordered the allocation of an extra $200 million to the Quds Force, the body in charge of “exporting revolution”. And last week, the Islamic Majlis, Tehran’s ersatz parliament, increased the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by over 60 percent. Khamenei’s spending spree is premised on the hoped of a quick lifting of US and other sanctions, which have produced the worst cash flow problem the 41-year-old regime has ever seen.

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Biden keeps rewarding the world’s villains

By on May 29th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/05/28/biden-keeps-rewarding-the-worlds-villains/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

President Joe Biden sure has a knack for rewarding the world’s . . . villains.

Take Hamas, which just agreed to a cease-fire for the faceoff it started by launching hundreds, eventually thousands, of rockets at Israeli civilians.

Even before that, Biden dropped the Trump policy of refusing aid to the Palestinian Authority until it ends its support of terrorism, promising $250 million in assistance — in potential violation of the Taylor Force Act, since the PA continues to pay “salaries” to imprisoned terrorists and the survivors of ones who died in the act.

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised more aid, upping the total to $360 million, theoretically to help rebuild in Gaza. Yet even State admits there’s “no guarantee” Hamas won’t divert the money to, for example, rebuilding its tunnels for terrorists to sneak into Israel.

And standing behind Hamas is Iran, which paid for most of the rockets launched from Gaza (and likely those launched from Lebanon and Syria during the 11-day flareup, as well). But Team Biden continues to try to restore the Obama nuclear deal with Tehran, ending sanctions and so giving the regime countless billions more to spend on sponsoring terror.

This when the deal’s better clauses — the ones that actually slow Iran’s drive to become a nuclear power — expire in just a few years, at which point the accord actually legitimizes Tehran’s nuclear work. And the International Atomic Energy Agency chief says Iran is enriching uranium up to purity levels that “only countries making bombs are reaching.”

Meanwhile, the president has seen fit to schedule a summit this summer with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as waive sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will increase Germany’s dependenceon Russian natural gas and remove Ukraine’s ability to stop Russia’s gas sales to Europe the next time he decides to chop off a piece of that country.

Quite a favor for a guy whom Biden pointedly called a “killer” and whose interference (most Democrats believe) put Donald Trump in the White House. And soon after Russia-based hackers cyberattacked a US pipeline and created major gas shortages here — followed by new cyberassaults on federal agencies by hackers linked to Russian intelligence.

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Blinken and Netanyahu: Ships Passing in the Night The first meeting between the U.S. secretary of state and Israel’s prime minister laid bare a series of problems that politely slipped past one another. That is not the end of them. By Shoshana Bryen

By on May 28th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/27/blinken-and-netanyahu-ships-passing-in-the-night/

After their meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made what were supposed to be “soft” public statements. The politely worded remarks deliberately slid past serious policy differences, but those differences cannot and should not be hidden. Moreover, they should form the basis of conversation between the two allies in the future.

Blinken laid out four reasons for his visit to the region. 

First, “to demonstrate the commitment of the U.S. to Israel’s security.” This needs no comment.

Second, “to start to work toward greater stability and reduce tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem.” 

Blinken didn’t mention the six weeks of intense Palestinian Authority (PA) incitement to violence, including speeches and music videos promising glory for those who killed Jews. A music video was repeatedly broadcast in which Palestinians declared, “I fired my shots, I threw my bomb, I detonated, detonated, detonated my [explosive] belts . . . My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.” Mahmoud Abbas’ religious affairs ministry told viewers, “Islam does not want you to be submissive to others,” and “if you die fighting, you go to paradise; if you kill the enemies, they go to hell.” Check out the “TikTok Intifada.” 

This, of course, caused tension for Palestinians who believed Israel ultimately would respond. But in addition, Blinken might have noted the tension in Israel resulting from that same incitement, and the ensuing violence, along with the periodic addition of terrorist Hamas rockets being fired into civilian neighborhoods.

The third reason, said Blinken, was “to support urgent humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for Gaza, to benefit the Palestinian people.” 

Joe Biden did say Hamas would be kept away from the reconstruction money and materiel, but it is unclear how that will be enforced and who will do the enforcing, as the PA has absolutely no control over what Hamas does in Gaza. Neither does the United States. Nor does the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Nor do the usual European donors, who are, this time, showing some skepticism about pouring more money down the hole. 

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Biden’s Palestinian Mission is Doomed to Fail by Con Coughlin

By on May 26th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17402/biden-palestinian-mission

The big problem, though, with Mr Biden’s commitment for the US to work with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is that the ability of Mr Abbas’s organisation to exercise any influence over Gaza is virtually negligible.

While Mr Abbas continues to indulge in the fiction that he is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the reality so far as Gaza is concerned is that it is the Islamist leaders of Hamas who exercise total control over Gaza.

The jubilant celebrations that took place among Palestinians when the ceasefire finally took hold were not held to express their relief that the fighting was over. The celebrations took place as a demonstration of support for Hamas’s role in launching a massive attack on Israel.

The bad news for Mr Biden is that Hamas not only has zero interest in working with the US and other aid agencies on reconstruction projects in Gaza and other Palestinian territories. It has no interest in resolving tensions with Israel.

[T]he main objective of the Hamas movement, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US and a host of other Western governments, is the complete destruction of the state of Israel, an ambition it shares with Iran, Hamas’s close ally and benefactor.

Indeed, Israeli intelligence officials believe Iran deliberately used the recent bout of fighting to test Israel’s air defence systems with a view to improving Hamas’s capability to inflict maximum damage on the Israeli people in any future conflict.

To judge by the jubilant Palestinian celebrations that greeted the ceasefire that ended 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden’s belief that the agreement presents a “genuine opportunity to make progress” on resolving tensions between Israel and the Palestinians seems naively optimistic.

Moreover, the same can be said of the president’s pledge to provide Gaza with humanitarian and reconstruction aid to help the Palestinian residents in the wake of the latest outbreak of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Blinken blinkered: Biden Secretary of State can’t give a clear answer on Hamas financing from Iran By Monica Showalter

By on May 26th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/blinken_blinkered_biden_secretary_of_state_cant_give_a_clear_answer_on_hamas_financing_from_iran.html

The Biden administration is loaded with people who can’t admit the obvious.

The border is in crisis. Immunization means you can’t catch COVID. COVID originated in a ChiCom lab.  Inflation? What inflation? 

Now it’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s turn. Get a load of this exchange reported by the Daily Caller, describing Blinken’s appearance on ABC’s “The Week”:

The show’s host [former Clinton administration operative George Stephanopoulos] then brought up a May 13 letter by a group of Senate Republicans, in which the lawmakers urged Biden to stop offering sanction relief to Iran, citing its funding of Hamas.

“Do you believe that Iran is funding Hamas? And if they are, should the sanctions stay in place?,” Stephanopoulos asked Blinken.

“You know, George, Iran is engaged in a number of activities, including funding extremist groups, supporting terrorism more broadly, supporting very dangerous proxies that are taking destabilizing actions throughout the Middle East, proliferating weapons,” Blinken responded.

The secretary of state also said that the first priority is to bring Iran back into “compliance with the nuclear agreement, the so-called JCPOA,” and that Former President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure … clearly did not get the result that we all seek.”

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Rebuild What With Whom? Shoshana Bryen

By on May 26th, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/rebuild-what-whom-opinion-1594375?utm_term=Autofe

Video has emerged of Palestinians fighting on the grounds of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, also known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The AP reported that only hours after the ceasefire with Israel took effect, thousands of Hamas supporters demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the rule of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, chanting, “Dogs of the Palestinian Authority, out, out. The people want the president to leave.” Violence quickly ensued.

This is a glimpse of Palestinian politics that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should take seriously as they discuss reconstruction in Gaza. The Hamas rocket war on Israel owed much to the Hamas-Fatah civil war that began in 2007 and has simmered since then, with Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank. Each is a dictatorship. In the run-up to a planned 2021 Palestinian election, Abbas stoked violence against Israel, claiming that Al-Aqsa was under siege and Israel was committing “ethnic cleaning.” Abbas, apparently, feared he might lose the election to Hamas—so he canceled it and blamed Israel.

PA television was full of speeches and music videos promising glory for those who killed Jews. A music video was repeatedly broadcast in which Palestinians declared, “I fired my shots, I threw my bomb, I detonated, detonated, detonated my [explosive] belts. …My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.” Abbas’ religious affairs advisor told viewers, “Islam does not want you to be submissive to others,” and “if you die fighting, you go to paradise; if you kill the enemies, they go to hell.”

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As Biden “Rebuilds” Gaza Infrastructure, Hamas Brags It Turned Water Pipes Into Rockets Daniel Greenfield

By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/biden-rebuilds-gaza-infrastructure-hamas-brags-it-daniel-greenfield/

After the war comes the reconstruction.

That means pouring money into Gaza while insisting that none of the money will go to Hamas and that none of the humanitarian aid will be used for terrorist purposes. It’s just rebuilding infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hamas keeps boasting about how it turns infrastructure into terrorism.

Terrorists’ ability to turn seemingly innocent household commodities into the tools of terror has always created a challenge for peaceful states fighting terror. Fertilizer has been used to build lethal bombs and instead of using tons of cement that Israel permitted into the Gaza Strip for the building of homes, schools and factories, Hamas built 100 kilometers of terror tunnels that Israel destroyed in the recent war.

Now there is another seemingly innocuous construction material that has joined the arsenal of terror: water pipes. There were some reports that Israel was surprised by the high number of rockets – 4,300 – that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists had in their arsenals to launch against civilians in Israeli cities in the recent 11-day Gaza war. Now the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has explained this: He bragged that the “resistance engineers” have turned “water pipes… into the rockets that you see.”

Time to rebuild that “infrastructure”.

The United Nations said it had released $22.5 million, which would go towards rebuilding damaged water and electricity infrastructure and disposing of explosive ordnance.

The ordnance can go into the infrastructure. That’s how it works.

President Joe Biden told a White House briefing on Friday that a two-state solution was the only answer to resolving the deep-rooted conflict.

“I’m praying this cease-fire will hold,” he said, before pledging U.S. support to help rebuild Gaza, which is governed by the terrorist group Hamas 

It’ll hold until enough of Gaza is “rebuilt” for Hamas to rebuild more rockets. 

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