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FOREIGN POLICY

Biden’s Anti-Israel “Point Man” Behind Plan to Fund Terrorists America must “regain trust and goodwill” of terrorists with taxpayer money. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/bidens-anti-israel-point-man-behind-plan-fund-daniel-greenfield/

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11 while working with an anti-Israel group.

A few years later, the Beirut-born extremist had become an advisor on Muslim relations to the World Economic Forum before heading up Brookings’ Doha Center for Qatar. The tiny Islamic tyranny is allied with Iran, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a backer of Hamas.

The Obama administration appointed Amr as the Deputy Head of USAID’s Middle East Bureau which put him in a key position to direct taxpayer money from an organization already notorious for funding pro-terrorist and anti-Israel groups.

A decade after Amr had responded to the death of a Hamas leader by ranting that “there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents”, the Obama administration made him a Deputy to its Special Envoy for Israeli Palestinian negotiations. 

Amr decamped back to Brookings during the Trump administration, becoming one of Biden’s big bundlers, joining his transition team and getting picked as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Within two decades of praising the intifada against Israel and a decade of working for a think-tank deeply compromised by its pro-Hamas regime sponsor, the foreign radical had climbed to a pole position in setting the Biden administration’s policy on Israel.

Politico described Amr as “the key U.S. official dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.” The Times of Israel called him, “Biden’s point-man on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Biden’s point man didn’t waste much time.

On February 1st, it was reported that Amr had spoken with Minister Hussein al-Sheikh of the Palestinian Authority.  Al-Sheikh, a member of the PLO Central Council and of the Central Committee of the Fatah Party, had praised the top terrorist Hmeid family as a “fighting family” whose members had murdered at least 10 Israelis, and promised aid to it. 

America Must Go Beyond Wishful Thinking About China By John Horvat II

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/america_must_go_beyond_wishful_thinking_about_china.html

America and the West’s policy of “constructive engagement” with Communist China make up the most egregious case of wishful thinking in history. For almost fifty years, the West has pumped trillions of dollars into the Chinese experiment and now has little to show for it except a much stronger China. Fortunately, many Americans are now waking up to the dangers of dealing with the Chinese dragon. It is not a moment too soon.  

Ever since President Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 trip to China, the West has deceived itself into believing that being nice to Red China is a win-win proposition.  The policy’s underlying reasoning was that opening China up would expose the communist nation to freedom, which would induce its dictators to change and do what is best for the Chinese people. Alas, how wrong the West has been.

Several Myths

The wishful thinking revolved around several myths about China.

The first myth is that by introducing a free market system into the country, the leadership would gradually adopt a capitalist-like scheme that would be communist in name only. The West has long asserted that the Chinese have abandoned Marxist ideology and embraced world markets. 

However, the Chinese have never stopped insisting that they are genuinely communist. The more the West claims that China is not communist, the more the Chinese openly say they are. The recent hardline developments of the Xi dictatorship have dashed the hopes of Western optimists. Hong Kong and the persecution of the Catholic Church now offer bitter testimony that nothing has changed.

Backward Masking Biden On the “Big Guy’s” watch, China’s influence will “grow and expand.” Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/backward-masking-biden-lloyd-billingsley/

“China has an overall goal, and I don’t criticize them for the goal, but they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch because the United States are going to continue to grow and expand.”

That was Joe Biden in his March 25 press conference. The squad of compliant reporters failed to ask about gains China had already made on Biden’s watch, which began in 2012. That year, as The Atlantic reported, “Biden Gets China,” a move orchestrated by Thomas Donilon, once described by James Mann in Foreign Policy as “Obama’s Gray Man” and seldom mentioned in the press.

Donilon advised Biden in his 1988 run for the presidency and presided over a meltdown at the Federal National Mortgage Association. That prompted Robert Scheer of the Nation to brand Donilon a “top hustler” and wonder why President Obama would tap him for National Security Advisor.

On Biden’s watch as vice president, China ramped up internal repressions and became more aggressive, modernizing their military and creating island bases that put key American allies and interests at risk. In 2019, on the anniversary, of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Joe Biden called for “recommitting to the universal struggle for human dignity” but offered no direct criticism of China’s Communist regime. During the 2020 campaign, Bidcen described the regime as “not bad folks, folks.” With the PRC, that was Biden’s essential message from the start.

Sen. Joe Biden voted against strong sanctions on Communist China as a response to the Tiananmen massacre. In 1998, the United States again proposed sanctions on the PRC, including visa restrictions, and Biden was part of a group of ten senators opposed to the measures. In 2001, Sen. Biden, then head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supported China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. As he explained, “the United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules.” That theme emerged in Biden’s White House press conference.

Biden Is Determined to Create Jobs… in China by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17250/biden-jobs-plan-china

For three principal reasons, his [Biden’s] jobs plan will create full employment in China. First, Biden will create substantially more demand for Chinese materials to go into America’s planned physical infrastructure improvements. Second, the large corporate tax increases he proposes will drive even more businesses out of the U.S. — and across the Pacific. Third, Biden’s “green energy” ideas will eliminate one of the crucial advantages American manufacturers now have: cheap energy.

“Unless we invest in the capacity to make the steel, cement, and the other materials that go into our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, we will always be at the mercy of China’s Communist Party” — Jonathan Bass, CEO of Whom Home and onshoring advocate, in an interview with Gatestone Institute, April 2021.

“Domestic security, domestic economic security, is essential to international security. If we damage our economy… with all these tax hikes, including the corporate tax hikes, companies will be leaving, not coming here. We will lose jobs, not gain jobs. Our whole economy will suffer.” — Larry Kudlow, former director of the National Economic Council, Fox Business, March 30, 2021.

So, do we really need the federal government to do anything? After all, industry is moving in a “green energy” direction on its own.

“We can’t have a policy that sets us behind and still win a competition with China.” — Robert Lighthizer, U.S. Trade Representative 2017-2021, Fox Business, March 30, 2021.

“It’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II,” President Joe Biden said on March 31 in Pittsburgh, as he announced his $2.3 trillion infrastructure program. “It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”

He is correct. Biden will, in his American Jobs Plan as it’s formally called, create millions of good-paying jobs. Many of those jobs, however, will not be in America,. For three principal reasons, his jobs plan will create full employment in China.

First, Biden will create substantially more demand for Chinese materials to go into America’s planned physical infrastructure improvements. Second, the large corporate tax increases he proposes will drive even more businesses out of the U.S. — and across the Pacific. Third, Biden’s “green energy” ideas will eliminate one of the crucial advantages American manufacturers now have: cheap energy.

Biden’s Great-Power Test Begins China presses the Philippines at sea while Russia rattles Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-great-power-test-begins-11617748045?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group entered the South China Sea for “routine operations” amid a Chinese maritime militia standoff with the Philippines. China’s provocation comes as Russia has surged forces near Ukraine. The Biden Administration may be getting an early test of whether its model of liberal multilateralism can deter revisionist powers pushing against U.S. interests.

The Philippines began to sound the alarm last month over Chinese militia boats, at one point totaling 220, occupying the Whitsun Reef west of the archipelago. The naval equivalent of Russia’s “little green men,” China’s military-affiliated flotillas can masquerade as fishing fleets to give Beijing plausible deniability as it entrenches itself in disputed waters.

An analysis by two researchers from the U.S. Naval War College last week found “no evidence of fishing whatsoever during these laser-focused operations, but every indication of trolling for territorial claims.”

For more than a decade China has been moving aggressively to establish dominance in the waters surrounding the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan, building military installations and harassing other nations’ commercial vessels. In 2016 an international court said China was breaking the law in the South China Sea. The Trump Administration last summer sanctioned firms involved in the construction of illegal islands there.

Ruthie Blum: Abbas’s snubs work like a charm on Biden

https://www.jns.org/opinion/abbass-snubs-work-like-a-charm-on-biden/

 Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas may be facing serious challenges to his reign in Ramallah, but he’s having no trouble playing the powers-that-be in Washington. After four years of being called to task by the administration of former President Donald Trump, Abu Mazen (as he is familiarly known in the Middle East) is once again enjoying the upper hand.
Recent moves by the White House and State Department to “reset” relations with the P.A. by reversing decisions made by Trump haven’t come as a surprise. Prior to and upon his election, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he would be cozying up to the Palestinians.

Using more diplomatic language, members of his team have reiterated America’s intention to “restore” relations with the Palestinians in a number of concrete ways. These include reopening the PLO office in Washington and a restoration of massive amounts of financial aid to the P.A. and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Yet, just as no “goodwill gesture” aimed at reversing Trump’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians has been unexpected, neither has Abbas’s typically ungracious attitude. Unlike Trump’s people, however—who made it clear from the outset that the aging despot’s delusions of grandeur and posturing wouldn’t work on them—Biden’s are kissing up to him.
An incident that took place a few weeks ago is illustrative.
In mid-February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken personally phoned Abbas, undoubtedly to discuss all the goodies that the P.A. could anticipate from Biden & Co, and perhaps to wish him well in the upcoming elections. But rather than bask in the attention that he was receiving from America’s top diplomat, Abbas refused to take the call.
Yes, the head of the tiny terrorism-supporting entity was deeply offended that someone of Blinken’s “inferior” stature was on the line. Abbas, after all, had demanded that Biden himself initiate the conversation, “president to president.”

Palestinians: US Taxpayer Money Going to Terrorists by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17208/palestinians-terrorists-us-aid-money

The memo, however, does not specifically say that the renewed US funding would be conditioned on ending the Palestinians’ “pay-to-slay” program. Instead, the Biden administration is only seeking a “commitment” from the Palestinian leadership to end the stipends.

It is likely that PA President Mahmoud Abbas may make such a “commitment” to the Biden administration. In reality, however, Abbas has announced over the past few years that he would never stop the payments to the imprisoned terrorists and the families of the “martyrs.”

In the world of Abbas and the Palestinians, any Palestinian who is killed while carrying out a terror attack against Jews is a martyr and hero.

“We will not deduct or suspend the allowances. Even if we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs. We consider the martyrs and prisoners as our stars.” — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Wafa.ps

The Palestinian leadership is now hoping that the Biden administration will turn a blind eye to the “pay-for-slay’ program and allow them to continue funding terrorists and their families.

The Palestinians are letting the world know that the payments to the terrorists will absolutely continue, just not through the banks. The Palestinians are trying to make it look as if this is a problem related only to the method of payment, and not the fact that the money is going to reward terrorists for murdering, or attempting to murder, Jews.

It is clear that any Palestinian “commitment” to cease rewarding terrorists will not be worth the paper it is written on. Abbas and his henchmen are telling the Biden administration one thing in English and their people the opposite in Arabic. They have no intention whatsoever of stopping the blood-soaked payments. In order to ensure that they continue, the Palestinian leadership are funneling the terror funds through the Palestinian post offices.

If and when the Biden administration resumes financial aid to Abbas, those who will resume collecting US taxpayer dollars are the terrorists.

The Biden administration’s decision to resume unconditional US financial aid to the Palestinians will allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to continue rewarding terrorists who kill Jews, and sometimes, as “collateral damage,” others.

Last week, the Biden administration reportedly confirmed to Congress that the PA has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists and their families.

The Biden administration, however, emphasized that the PA’s actions will not impact its plan to renew funding to the Palestinians.

A non-public State Department report revealed that the Palestinians distributed at least $151 million in 2019 on their “pay-to-slay” program, in which international aid dollars are spent to support imprisoned terrorists and their families. Financial statements also revealed that at least $191 million was lavished on “deceased Palestinians referred to as ‘martyrs.'”

Jordan’s Volatility Alerts the USA to Middle East Reality Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3sSvn1O  Jordan’s domestic vulnerability

Jordan’s domestic upheaval involved some Arab countries, members of the royal Jordanian family and other prominent Bedouins, who were arrested and charged with an attempted regime change.

A regime-change in Jordan could transform the strategically-located country – between Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel – into another haven for Palestinian and Islamic terrorism. It would threaten the existence of the current regimes in Saudi Arabia, all other pro-US Gulf states and Egypt, advancing the interests of Iran’s Ayatollahs, Turkey’s Erdogan, the Muslim Brotherhood, China and Russia, while traumatizing regional stability and with dire Western and Israeli national security and economic consequences.  

Jordan’s inherent political and ideological vulnerability has been fueled by intra-Bedouin fragmentation and conflicts, dating back to 1921, when the Hashemite Bedouin family was imported to Jordan – from Hejaz in western Saudi Arabia – by the British Empire, and imposed upon the indigenous Bedouins of (mostly southern) Jordan.  Furthermore, Jordan’s Bedouins are deeply divided, geographically, tribally, culturally, ideologically and religiously, with some of the southern tribes considering the Hashemites “carpetbaggers” from the Arabian Peninsula, Westernized and straying away from Islam and pan-Arabism by concluding a peace treaty with the “infidel” Jewish State.

Moreover, 70% of Jordan’s population are Palestinians, while Palestinian leaders (e.g., the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas) view Jordan as an artificial entity, the eastern (78%) part of Palestine. Hence, Palestinian active involvement in subversion and terrorism in Jordan and occasional attempts to topple the Hashemite regime, such as the civil war in September 1970 and the 1989 wave of terrorism.

Appeasing Cuba’s Regime Didn’t Work The Biden administration should learn from the failures of the Obama administration. by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX-10) and Rep.Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appeasing-cubas-regime-didnt-work-11617400699?mod=opinion_major_pos5

For more than 60 years, a dictatorship has imposed a violently oppressive system on the Cuban people. Its human-rights abuses grew worse under the appeasement policy of the Obama-Biden administration. Amid the “thaw” in relations, documented political detentions rose to 9,940 in 2016 from 8,616 in 2015. The Castro regime lined its pockets and expanded its machinery of repression.

The malignancy has spread beyond the island. After revamping the Venezuelan military and intelligence services, Cuba led efforts to sustain the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro regime and supported its abuses, which mirrored those carried out against the Cuban people. The 2020 State Department report on Venezuela highlights torture, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings—abuses that “amounted to crimes against humanity,” U.N.-appointed investigators found.

The Cuban dictatorship also worked with Hezbollah, a terrorist proxy of Iran, to prop up the Maduro regime. In Cuba, terrorists find a haven. The regime refused Colombia’s extradition requests following a 2019 bombing that killed 22. The Cuban regime reportedly also harbors American fugitives such as terrorist cop-killer Joanne Chesimard, hijacker-murderer Ishmail Muslim Ali and terrorist bomb-maker William Morales. Inexplicably, the Obama administration delisted Cuba as a state sponsor of terror in 2015. This January, the Trump administration corrected that error.

Let’s not forget that the attacks in 2016 and 2017 against U.S. diplomats in Havana remain unsolved. Many U.S. personnel and their families suffered debilitating brain injuries.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall By Richard Fernandez

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/04/04/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-5-n1437169

“Future historians may tell us whether the Nov 2020 has triggered some ghastly overreach by America’s enemies or some march of folly by Washington’s ruling elite.”

The new administration started off using virtue signaling as an important component of foreign and domestic policy. But now even the “only adults in the room” suddenly suspect that  Woke garlic doesn’t repel vampires. Russia and China continue to defy the rules of the Biden-Harris administration despite their expectation that the world would return to its pre-2016 order. Pundits are starting to accept something has gone wrong in the calculations.

Russia and China — not to mention North Korea and Iran — are all on the move and don’t seem deterred by Washington. If disaster overtakes the Biden Harris restoration future historians will conclude that organized self delusion played a leading part. The cultural and political establishment belief in the Great Reset after Trump sputtered and instead of the predicted return to normal the global world has continued its descent into crisis. Perhaps the status quo overattributed the problems of the old global world to populist unrest and failed to address the basic weaknesses which caused them. They thought they could pick up where they left off and couldn’t.

Joe Biden’s focus on ensuring populism never rises again in America through the institutionalization of mail-in voting, social media deplatforming, gun control, and Curleyism may have to compete with challenges from the global world. The Democratic Party has “near enemies” but it also has “far enemies.”…

There are three main challenges to the restoration of the status quo ante:

The slow emergence of the Third World from the Covid pandemic;
The disruption of the global supply chain by lockdowns; and
The direct challenge to Joe Biden by Xi Jinping for leadership of the international system.