RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is no wonder, then, that the classified State Department report’s findings — showing that billions of taxpayer dollars have been funneled over the years into an organization that has seems to have been perpetuating a fraud — that the Obama administration kept its content a secret from the American public.

UNRWA is anything but a humanitarian organization interested in the welfare of the Palestinians whom it claims to have spent the past nearly 70 years assisting. It is, rather, a self-serving political body that has bolstered Arab/Palestinian rejectionism and perpetuated Palestinian suffering, thereby preventing peace and prosperity.

Its dissolution is long overdue.

In early 2018, President Donald Trump froze a large portion of the funding that the United States provides annually for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees a in the Near East). Prior to imposing the $125 million freeze, Trump tweeted: “[W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.”

The president’s move came in response to the fact that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen yet again were rejecting American and Israeli peace overtures. Yet it was both welcome and necessary for reasons well beyond Palestinian intransigence. UNRWA not only has an abominable record of ties to terrorism, which makes a mockery of its mandate to ” provide relief, human development and protection services;” but its entire existence is based on a false premise — a special UN definition of “refugee” for Palestinians that sets them apart from other people in the world categorized as such. It thus has been able for decades to keep cash flowing freely into its coffers, providing “humanitarian services” for millions of Palestinians who are not refugees by any measure. As the ZOA’s Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel recently wrote:

“All this stands in stark contrast to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international body that deals with all refugee problems other than the Palestinian Arabs. UNHRC observes a universal definition of refugee status, one that applies solely to those who actually fled their country during hostilities, civil war, natural disaster, or other disturbances. UNHCR works to resettle refugees quickly and dismantle the temporary refugee camps housing them. Nor does it count descendants as refugees.

-Israel relations have surged commercially and militarily since Israel’s establishment in 1948, and Israel enjoys a 74% favorability rating according to the 2018 annual Gallup poll of favorability (compared to 21% for the Palestinian Authority). This positive state of relations has been achieved despite the systematic pressure by all US Presidents – from Truman through Obama – and in spite of persistent criticism of Israel by the Department of State, the New York Times and the Washington Post (all three opposed the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State) and other representatives of the “elite” US media.

US-Israel relations have dramatically expanded in defiance of conventional common sense, but consistent with – and nurtured by – the 400 year old ideological, moral, cultural, religious and historical foundations of the United States, which have enriched the US-Israel saga, featuring a unique people-to-people, bottom-up relationship, with elected officials representing the wish of most constituents.

For example, on March 5, 1891 – antedating Theodore Herzl and the 1897 First Zionist Congress – US President, Benjamin Harrison, received the William Blackstone Memorial, which called for the reestablishment of the Jewish State in the Land of the Bible: “Palestine for the Jews.” The Memorial was signed by over 400 distinguished Americans, such as the Chief Justice, additional Supreme Court Justices, future President William McKinley, senators, congressmen (including the Speaker of the House and the Chairmen of the Ways and Means and International Relations Committees), Governors, mayors, university presidents, businessmen, clergy and media editors.

The signatories of the “Blackstone Memorial” were overwhelmingly Christian movers and shakers, who signed the document well before the emergence of the Jewish political lobby, reflecting the Biblical, Judeo-Christian roots of the USA.

‘Israeli soldiers do not thrive on shooting innocent Palestinians or even Hamas activists’
http://freebeacon.com/culture/israelis-respond-biased-coverage-gaza-riots/

TEL AVIV, Israel—A couple of weeks before the Gaza riots began, the pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA put up across from the New York Times building a massive billboard: “The New York Times At it AGAIN: Defaming Israel with distorted ‘news.'” Although its strategic location made it impossible to miss, Israelis nearly universally agree that the Old Gray Lady didn’t get the message—and that the Times is but one of a slew of global media outlets copying from the same script, according to which IDF soldiers randomly kill peaceful protesters.

While the Israeli public is accustomed to anti-Israel bias in the international media, coverage of the Gaza riots appears to have a struck a nerve, perhaps because foreign coverage of “peaceful protests” is so at odds with what Israelis see on their local TV. On Israeli TV they see swastika-painted kite bombs setting alight Israeli fields, bullets lodged into the window sills of nearby Sderot homes, Hamas fence-cutting units crying “Khaybar, Khaybar”—a battle cry referring to the Muslim massacre of Jews in that Arabian town in 628 A.D. When these aspects of the story don’t make it to Western media outlets, Israelis are understandably aggrieved.

Nizar Amer, a deputy spokesperson at Israel’s foreign ministry, says that from the Israeli government’s point of view, most of the coverage in the international media fails to provide the full picture. “You didn’t see many media outlets saying that Hamas led and organized this campaign. There’s a gap between what’s happening on the ground and what the media is reporting.” A pundit on Israel’s Channel 20, a news channel with a nationalistic bent, argued that the country should start ejecting journalists who print falsehoods about Israel. Amer says given the importance of freedom of the press, he doesn’t see Israel doing that.

Stop Demonizing Israel for Defending Herself

Hand it to Hamas. As this week’s events in Gaza showed, the terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction can still manipulate the media into demonizing Israel for the legitimate actions it takes to defend itself.

Hamas’s four-step formula for success is by now familiar. First, get a media that is largely hostile toward Israel, simply ignorant or both to ignore Hamas’s genocidal goals and excuse its terrorism. Second, put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way. Third, force Israel, while defending itself, to kill some of those civilians. Fourth, rely on that same hostile and ignorant media to blame Israel for these deaths.

In Gaza, step one began some seven weeks ago. Hamas called for tens of thousands of Palestinians to join a weekly “March of Return” — effectively, the flooding of Israel with millions of the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the War of Independence (which five Arab nations started, promising to throw the Jews into the sea).

The March of Return was to culminate in a mid-May march on “Nakba” day, which Palestinians mark each year to remember the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation.

Palestinian “marchers” were told to break down the security fence separating Gaza from Israel, a clear and present danger to all those living in Jewish communities only hundreds of yards from that fence.

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, could not have been clearer about his goals: “We will take down the border and tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

But as thousands of Palestinians showed up to achieve that murderous goal, the media was determined to tell another tale. Press reports insisted that the march was “against the occupation” and “for humanitarian relief” in Gaza. Such nonsense continued even as rioters destroyed the very infrastructure that enables Israel to deliver food, medicine and supplies into Gaza.

This week, the media narrative shifted. Despite all evidence to the contrary, suddenly we were told that the riots in Gaza were against the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. “Marches over embassy move take on violent edge” read a headline in The Post, one of many similar headlines around the globe.

The prime minister said that if Tehran genuinely wanted to pursue a peaceful nuclear program, it would “not need a single centrifuge.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech on Monday outlining the 12 steps Iran must take for sanctions relief, saying this is “the right policy.”

The prime minister, speaking at a Foreign Ministry reception in the presence of Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes marking the opening of that country’s embassy in Jerusalem, said that US President Donald Trump has “changed policy in fundamental ways,” not only regarding Jerusalem, but also Iran.
Netanyahu said that Pompeo in his speech echoed Trump’s strong positions regarding Iran: that there should be tough economic sanctions and no Iranian nuclear enrichment, and that the Islamic Republic must leave Syria.

“We believe that is the right policy,” Netanyahu said. “We believe it is the only policy that can ultimately guarantee the security of the Middle East and bring peace in our region, and we call on all countries to follow America’s lead here, because Iran is an aggressive force.”

The prime minister said that if Tehran genuinely wanted to pursue a peaceful nuclear program, it would “not need a single centrifuge.” If the Iranians wanted a peaceful nuclear program, he added, “they would not hide their secret archives for making nuclear weapons.”

Israel stole and revealed the nuclear archives earlier this month, in a stunning intelligence coup. Netanyahu said that the fact that Iran did not destroy the archives – as South Africa and Libya did when they stopped their nuclear programs – was a clear sign of Tehran’s intentions.

“Iran did not destroy the archives,” he said. “Iran hid the archives, lied about it [and] moved it from place to place, because they are seeking nuclear weapons. The American position prevents them from having nuclear weapons and brings [to an end] the cash machine they used to fund their conquest of the Middle East. Thank you America.”