“Is the Biden Administration at War with Israel?” by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18010/biden-administration-israel

“The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah — where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA… the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem.” — Eugene Kontorovitch, professor, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia School of Law, Israel Hayom, December 5, 2021.

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states that “a consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State’s consent”. In other words, reopening the consulate may be done only with the consent of the Israeli government.

All this cannot be dissociated from the general hostile attitude of the Biden administration towards Israel from the moment it came to power.

Earlier in March, an internal memo from the US State Department was leaked to The National, a daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It explains that “The Biden administration memo recommends voicing US principles on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework ‘based on the 1967 lines'”.

The author of the memo is Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. It is hard to imagine that Amr was chosen as an “honest broker”. Amr has a long history of anti-Israeli activities.

Amr is also is the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 in which some proposals are made that could be regarded as disturbing. The report says that the United States must “reconnect” with Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group; seek “to create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas”, and “compel Israel to make major concessions”, even if it may “endanger Israel”. The report never defines Hamas as a terrorist group, and never says that Hamas’s goal is to destroy Israel. The report adds, “should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway.”

The behavior of the Biden administration towards Israel is all the more worrying in that at the same time, it places itself in a weak position regarding negotiations with Iran and seems ready to make a deal with the mullahs’ regime at any price, in a resolution that has already been called “less for less”, or, worse, “less for more”.

An Israeli diplomatic service briefing recently announced the Biden administration is ready to accept a deal with Iran that includes only two elements: the removal of all international sanctions still imposed on Iran, and Iran’s pledge to stop enriching uranium, which would mean that Iran’s nuclear program would remain intact and that Iran’s regional destabilization actions, including its threats against Israel, could continue.

Two days before the current negotiations began, chief Iranian Army spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said to the Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) that Israel’s annihilation is his country’s “greatest ideal before us and the greatest goal we pursue.”

Iran claims, truthfully or not, that it already has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear warhead on short notice. On November 8, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, announced that Iran will only agree to sign a deal with the US if all sanctions are unconditionally lifted. “Either we agree on everything, or we agree on nothing,” he said.

The US Biden Administration seems…. at a time finally of peace, deliberately acting to destabilize not only Israel’s new coalition government but, more importantly, the entire region. The United States seems once again to be igniting, on the heels of its failure in Afghanistan, yet a second, unnecessary disruption, with all the carnage, global damage and pandemonium that will result. Those two historic upheavals will be the legacies of the Biden Administration. If Biden is looking for yet another disaster to notch on his belt, this is it.

On May 2018, when the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated on the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel’s founding, the US consulate in Jerusalem became useless and quickly shut its gates. Now, in 2021, the current US Biden administration wants to reopen the consulate, “for the Palestinians”, Arabs ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

Seeing this proposal as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declined the request.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

 

Israeli innovations continue to flow at an amazing pace. This week’s newsletter includes medical cures for Alzheimer’s and Covid; a cancer mutation database and saliva-based testing kits. The EU awarded a top prize to a female Israeli innovator; Israelis developed innovative devices for the disabled; and Innovation: Africa showcased to 25 African UN Ambassadors. Technological innovations include a new process for extracting hydrogen from water; purifying polluted water using UV LED light; capturing atmospheric CO2 in balloons; and destroying coronavirus using millimeter radiation. In business, Mastercard has opened an Israeli innovation lab; Israeli smart trolleys are heading to the US; and an Israeli startup has launched more virtual shops…..Michael Ordman

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a method of removing copper ions that cause the toxic buildup of amyloid plaque in Alzheimer’s patients. Professor Galia Maayan and PhD student Anastasia Behar have patented the groundbreaking “chelation” (extraction) process.
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/israel-scientists-molecule-alzheimers-disease-technion/
 
Genetic database saves lives in 44 countries. Israel’s Genoox (see here previously) has developed Franklin – a repository of genetic biopsy information relating to cancer mutations. Doctors in more than 1700 healthcare organizations in over 44 countries use Franklin to personalize cancer treatments to the patient’s genetic makeup.
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/genoox-precision-medicine-analyzing-genetic-data/
 
Covid treatment reduced deaths by 70%. (TY Hazel) In its latest Phase 2 trial at three major Israeli hospitals, MesenCure from Israel’s Bonus BioGroup (see here previously) reduced Covid-19 deaths to 6.7% compared to 23.3% of the control group. It is now aiming for emergency use authorization in US, EU, and Israel.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/israeli-drug-for-severe-covid-reduces-death-by-70-percent-phase-2-trial-686879
 
Saliva-based test kits. Israel’s Salignostics has developed Salistick, the world’s first and only saliva-based rapid pregnancy test kit. It detects the pregnancy hormone β-hCG and delivers a test result in 10 minutes. Another of Salignostics kits, SaliCov, detects Covid-19 from saliva in just 15 minutes.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3922310,00.html   https://www.salignostics.com/salistick/  
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/salignostics-world-first-saliva-based-pregnancy/  https://www.salignostics.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WinGNhtSBnw
 
The memory can aid healing. Researchers at Israel’s Technion (a team of Jews and Arabs) have discovered that the brain can induce a psychosomatic response not only to cause illness, but also to heal it. Inflammation in mice activated specific neurons which later could be manipulated to re-create or control the inflammation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742101223X?dgcid=coauthor
 
UK extends partnership for research into aging. The Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange (BIRAX) partnership has launched a new £1.6 million grant program to fund joint research between Israeli and UK scientists in the field of ageing. (see here for 2018 initiative)
https://english.tau.ac.il/news/healthy-aging-research   https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316469
 
Stay on your feet. Comprehensive article describing the innovative device from Israel’s Votis (see here previously) that can identify peripheral artery disease (PAD) in its very early stages.
https://www.israel21c.org/finding-diabetic-foot-disease-before-symptoms-show-up/
 
$75 million initiative to tackle diabetes. Bar-Ilan University is creating a program to transform diabetes care. The Social Precision-medicine Health Equity Research Endeavour (SPHERE). is supported by a $20 million grant from the Russell Berrie Foundation and will identify genetic mutations that cause diabetes.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316803
 
Fixing hearts of children from the Congo. (TY I24 News) Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart (SACH – see here previously) is bringing its first group of Congolese children to the Jewish state for life-saving heart surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDTcl8UqLZo
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-israeli-ngo-brings-african-children-to-jewish-state-for-heart-surgery/
 
Saving a life while wearing pajamas. United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Noemie was asleep after finishing a late shift in the pediatric ward of Sheba Hospital. She was suddenly alerted to go to the aid of a 92-year-old unconscious woman but had no time to get dressed. She saved her patient, performing CPR in her pajamas!
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316902
 

Sydney Williams: It’s Not My Fault

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Being accountable for one’s actions and taking responsibility are fading qualities in our “woke” age. In the mid 1960s, on a snowy street in New Hampshire after a day’s skiing, my father, driving home, knocked a woman down, sending her to the hospital. The police told him it was not his fault. Nevertheless, he assumed responsibility, visiting her regularly until she recovered and was released. Such chivalry no longer exists. Like merit, hard work and objective truth, gallantry and graciousness are now, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in the December issue of The Spectator, “manifestations of heredity and ‘whiteness,’” – therefore to be condemned.

“Victory has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan,” is an old quote used by President Kennedy. Today’s politicians no longer take blame for policies gone wrong. Instead, they follow advice Napoleon is alleged to have given: “Never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.” When the January 6 march on the Capitol turned disastrous, Donald Trump never admitted that his words that afternoon helped provoke it. But neither has Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the Steel dossier, which was at the heart of the $40 million (taxpayer money) discredited Mueller investigation. Governor Andrew Cuomo placed COVID-19 infected patients in nursing homes, leading to a plethora of unnecessary deaths. Has he expressed remorse or assumed responsibility? No. Has he expressed sorrow for abusing women who worked in his office? No. “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” says the shaman Rafiki in The Lion King, “but you can either run from it or learn from it.” Politicians choose to run from their past, not learn from it.

Dr. Anthony Fauci belittles those who disagree with him by claiming an attack on him is an attack on science. Yet the science about COVID-19 has changed as more has been learned. But his arrogance forbids any display of humility, or admission of personal responsibility regarding helping to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Dr. Fauci’s denial gained two Pinocchio’s from left-leaning The Washington Post.) The recent rise in energy prices, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, is due to oil and gas producers “putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends…ahead of Americans.” Apparently higher prices have nothing to do with restrictions on drilling and cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline extension, policies which the Massachusetts Senator supports. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, regarding the disastrous flight from Afghanistan: “Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco in the past half century.” 

Civilizational Suicide, Not Omicron, Is Killing Us Emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts.  By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/11/civilizational-suicide-not-omicron-is-killing-us/

Last week in this space, I included a few words about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s remarkable new book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. I also included a link to Kennedy’s appearance on “Tucker Carlson Today.” 

It was a remarkable exchange and I commend both the book and the interview to your attention. I disagree with Kennedy about various things, including the efficacy of vaccines in general, but his assessment of the highest-paid employee of the federal government, Anthony Fauci, is worth the price of admission. 

As I remarked a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had done writing about COVID. Surely, I thought, the hysteria is on the wane. Most people are rational. They know that the flimsy porous masks you see everywhere are useless tokens of conformity. They understand that the disease is serious for only a tiny part of the population. They also know staying home and practicing “social distancing” has its own liabilities, not least of which is a diminution in the potency of one’s immune response.

Unfortunately, the people making the rules are not “most people.” They are bureaucrats being advised by public health “experts” like Anthony Fauci who has demonstrated ostentatious incompetence at least since the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. When news of the so-called Omicron variant first surfaced a few weeks back, I assumed the fact that doctors first described it as very contagious but also with symptoms that were “very mild,” meant the “experts” would let us get on with our lives.

Fat chance. It’s not just the old Rahm Emanuel wheeze of never letting a crisis go to waste. It’s also a matter of fabricating crises where none exist because emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts using the fake crisis as justification for bending or discarding the rules. 

So, even as Fauci warns that it is a matter of “when not if” the definition of “fully vaccinated” will change to include at least one who-knows-how-many booster shots, the CEO of Pfizer, dollar signs in his eyes, has already said that a fourth jab may be needed “sooner than expected” because of the Omicron variant.

Twelve Cities Set Murder Records for 2021 By Liz Sheld

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/09/morning-greatness-twelve-cities-set-murder-records-for-2021/

Welcome to Murderville, USA. Twelve cities have already set records for the number of murders in 2021 and the year isn’t even over yet. What is going on here?

“Nobody’s getting arrested anymore,” Robert Boyce, retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department said. “People are getting picked up for gun possession and they’re just let out over and over again.” Note: the most vicious anti-gun cities are not prosecuting gun violence. Chew on that.

ABC News reports: “The FBI crime data shows that the number of arrests nationwide plummeted 24% in 2020, from the more than 10 million arrests made in 2019. The number of 2020 arrests — 7.63 million — is the lowest in 25 years, according to the data. FBI crime data is not yet available for 2021.”

Social justice racketeers have pressured cities to cut their police forces. Soros prosecutors are declining to charge criminals for their crimes. Bail has been abolished in some places and violent criminals go free before their trial to continue their crime sprees. Police are retiring and getting out of the business and the ones who remain are terrified to the point that they do not engage with perpetrators lest they become the next internet video star. Many of these SJW politicians have historically complained there there are too many criminals in jail and advocated accordingly. Now we have fewer criminals in jail and more criminals walking the streets. Victory?

Get away from these cities and go live somewhere that has not abolished law and order.

Expert troll: DeSantis budgets $8 million to transport illegal aliens sent to Florida to places like Delaware and Martha’s Vineyard By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/expert_troll_desantis_budgets_8_million_to_transport_illegal_aliens_sent_to_florida_to_places_like_delaware_and_marthas_vineyard.html

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has added a bit of clever trolling to his impressively well-thought-out five-part plan to make up for the default of the Biden regime on border control. Monica Showalter cogently explained the guts of the plan laid out in the state budget yesterday on these pages, but DeSantis noted a bit of frosting on the plan in an address in Jacksonville. (35 minute video)

YouTube screengrab (cropped)

Via The Daily Wire:

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis released his new budget for the state this week, and in it he requests millions of dollars to begin removing illegal aliens from his state.

“In yesterday’s budget, I put in $8 million for us to be able to transport people here illegally out of the state of Florida,” DeSantis said on Friday. “It’s somewhat tongue in cheek, but it is true, if you sent them to Delaware or Martha’s Vineyard or some of these places, that border would be secure the next day.”

This is brilliant on multiple grounds:

Any protest against, say, a planeload of illegals landing at Martha’s Vineyard Airport, would only highlight the point that illegals are being flown at taxpayer expense to states far from the border – in the dead of night, often.
If one wishes to call the DeSantis plan “illegal” or “improper,” then the same terms must also apply to the Biden plan currently underway.
It would mobilize public opinion in blue states against the influx.
The expense is easily justifiable because of the social welfare and education costs attendant to illegal immigrants. Again, objections would just emphasize the costs of the Biden plan.

It’s always dangerous to get too enthusiastic about any politician. But I have to say that Ron DeSantis right now looks to me like the kind of leader the nation needs. He’s got the guts and vision of a Donald Trump, but with fewer rough edges that needlessly alienate some voters.

Now, let’s just lay in a supply of popcorn and wait for the reaction when the illegals arrive in Wilmington and Martha’s Vineyard.

Being Pro-Palestinian Actually Means Being Anti-Israel By Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/being_propalestinian_actually_means_being_antiisrael.html

Writing in 2009 about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the insightful Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh observed that, “What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation,’” he wrote, “as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”

And that is what those who observe the campus activism against Israel have never fully understood: that being pro-Palestinian, by definition, means being anti-Israel.

It does not involve urging the Palestinian leadership to come to terms with Israel about long unsettled negotiation points about borders, Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and other key issues. Is has never involved advising Palestinians to abandon terror, or so-called “resistance,” as a tactic for advancing political ambitions.

Those helping to promote Palestinian self-determination have not been firm in suggesting that Palestinian leaders and other officials end incitement, stop the indoctrination of children in textbooks and lesson plans that demonize Israel and Jews and teach children to look at the Jewish state as an abomination, an illegal regime, a perverse example of the malignancy of Jews who steal land, commit genocide, and oppress an innocent indigenous people.

The Palestinians have never been told by their supporters that it morally repugnant and diplomatically lethal to engage in a “pay to slay” program through which terrorists and their families were financially rewarded with $183 million in 2017, for example, garnered from foreign aid heaped on the Palestinians, purportedly for humanitarian aid.

In debating the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, social justice activists, of course, demonstrate their hypocrisy by endlessly dwelling on the many evils of Israel without bothering to examine or measure the Palestinians’ own central role in contributing to the many pathologies endemic to their civil society and institutions. Like many Western elites do when choosing sides, social justice warriors infantilize the Palestinian victim and assume he has no agency to ameliorate his own conditions.

Why ‘West Side Story’ Flopped On Opening Weekend By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-west-side-story-flopped-on-opening-weekend/

I assume Steven Spielberg’s $100 million remake of West Side Story isn’t being advertised quite as heavily in your neighborhood, but on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I live, you can scarcely take a breath without being hit with advertising for the movie. 20th Century Studios/Disney treated this as an event movie, it had the weekend all to itself, it had considerable critical acclaim/hype and some of the target demographic (the theater community, extending out to everyone who ever performed in the show in high school) was intensely interested.

Unfortunately, the movie also suffers from having no stars (sorry, Ansel Elgort, but you make Timothée Chalamet look like Marlon Brando) and it’s based on a property that may be beloved by people over 50 but is, I suspect, totally unknown to those under 40.  People over 50 don’t go to the movies. The single comment I most often hear from people when I tell them I’m a film critic is, “Oh, I haven’t been to the movies in years.” TV is where it’s at these days. West Side Story is on track to gross $10.2 million in North America on its opening weekend — less than the $11.5 million earned by In the Heights in June, even though In the Heights is a little-known property and it debuted on HBO Max the same day. Certainly, the public sense that the pandemic was over in June provided a boost and the reverse is true six months later.

West Side Story is, despite the terrific songs and attempts to update it, still an extremely dated property — corny, maudlin, contrived, phony. I saw it in a huge theater full of enthusiastic fans, and even there reaction was muted. It just isn’t that great. Word of mouth is not going to help this movie earn out.

Is Durham’s Case on Clinton-Tied Lawyer Michael Sussmann Collapsing? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/is-durhams-case-on-clinton-tied-lawyer-michael-sussmann-collapsing/

To put it mildly, this is going to be a very tough case for Durham.

D efense counsel for Michael Sussmann, the former Perkins-Coie lawyer indicted by Russiagate special counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI, now claim that information they have received in pretrial discovery substantially undermines the prosecution’s case.

In the one-count indictment, filed in mid September, Durham alleges that Sussmann misleadingly concealed the identities of his clients when he brought the FBI information that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin.

According to the indictment, Sussmann told the bureau’s then-general counsel, James Baker, that he was not representing any client. This is now said to have been false because Sussmann was representing both the campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, and a cyber expert who was hoping to land a top tech job in the anticipated Clinton administration. At the meeting, Sussmann told Baker that Alfa Bank, a major Russian financial institution, was the conduit for Trump-Kremlin communications, with its servers transmitting messages to and from a server at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The FBI looked into the Alfa Bank allegation and ultimately rejected it.

According to the New York Times, Sussmann’s attorneys claim that prior statements by Baker indicate that he knew Sussmann was representing clients. At a minimum, he has said different things at different times. The critical September 19, 2016, meeting between Baker and Sussmann was short – less than 20 minutes in all – and they were the only two people in the room. The false-statement charge thus hinges on Baker’s memory; because it appears faulty, Sussmann’s lawyers contend that the prosecution will not be able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Where John Durham’s Investigation Is Heading By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/where-john-durhams-investigation-is-heading/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

Reading the tea leaves, it appears the special counsel’s end game is something other than a sweeping indictment.

L ast week’s indictment of Igor Danchenko has the commentariat buzzing. If special counsel John Durham has cracked the core of the Russiagate case, if he has established that the Steele dossier on which the FBI substantially based its spy warrants was fraudulent, does that mean he is nearing a sweeping conspiracy indictment? Will there be criminal charges that target the real 2016 collusion — not between the Trump campaign and Russia, but between the Clinton campaign and U.S. officials who abused government investigative powers for political purposes?

Almost certainly not.

All signs are that Durham will end his investigation with a narrative report. It has looked that way for a long time. There are reasons why then-attorney general Bill Barr appointed then-Connecticut U.S. attorney Durham as a special counsel shortly before the Trump administration ended.

Unlike ordinary federal prosecutors, who either file charges or close investigations without comment, special counsels are required by regulation to write a report for the attorney general. As we saw with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019, there is typically great outside pressure on the AG to make such reports public (though doing so is not required). Barr obviously knew enough about Durham’s investigation to grasp that there was unlikely to be a grand, overarching criminal-conspiracy case; there had, however, been rampant malfeasance and abuse of power that might never come to light absent a comprehensive investigative report.