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A look back at the first disastrous ‘two-state solution’ Victor Sharpe

Posted By on May 26th, 2021

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/210512

“It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.” Rashida Tlaib, Democrat Congresswoman                                                                                                

In the 11th hour and 59th minute of his last term in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama struck his knife deep into the heart of Israel. With the appalling anti-Israel passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, engineered by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on December 23, 2016, the blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict was falsely imparted upon the easy target: Israel.

In June, 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish state survived yet another Arab war of genocide launched against it and freed the embattled nation from the existing 1947 nine – to – fifteen – mile – wide armistice lines, which Israel’s earlier minister of foreign affairs, Abba Eban, appropriately called the Auschwitz lines. Those were the lines that existed after the fledgling Israeli forces in 1948 had pushed back the invading Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese armies. Israel declared its independence in May, 1948 and immediately the Arabs launched a war of genocide.

But let us go back to 1920 when Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the defeat of the 400 year old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

The League of Nations created a number of articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to arbitrarily tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the River Jordan and give it to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan and led by the emir Abdullah.

British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”

Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili Jewish underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine from 1517 to 1917.

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Sydney Williams on The Age of Acrimony by Jon Grinspan

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“There is incredible variability in how we have used our democracy, with plenty of room for ugliness without apocalypse, and for reform without utopia.”   Jon Grinspan

                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The preamble to the Constitution begins: “We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union…” The emphasis is on “more.” The Founders never claimed to have formed a “perfect” Union, but one better than those that then existed. Also, in providing a process to improve and adjust the Constitution amendments were permitted. In fact, the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratified on December 15, 1791. In the subsequent 230 years, seventeen additional amendments have been ratified. Our democracy is not static; it adjusts, not easily but judiciously, as customs and behaviors change. Jon Grinspan has given us, who now live in a new age of political strife, a well-written – albeit brief – informative look at the fifty years following the Civil War – a time of political acrimony.

The time span covered by Mr. Grinspan – 1865 to 1915 – begins with the assassination of Lincoln and a Country emerging from the Civil War; it ends with the United States having surpassed Britain as the world’s largest industrial power. He takes us through Reconstruction and how it petered out, with violence in the South against blacks and with the North having given up on the concept of equal rights. We travel through the “Gilded Age” when fortunes were made in railroads, mining, oil, steel, electricity, shipping, newspapers and finance, and when former farmhands, women and children were recruited to work in city sweat shops and factories, where they performed low-paying, mind-numbing (often dangerous) repetitive jobs. His story ends with the reforms of the “Progressive Era.” In the early post-Civil War period, the public wanted the entertainment that political campaigners provided: “They expected charisma and wit and the hottest-burning fuel of the era: political outrage.” During these fifty years, we saw eleven Presidents, high voter turnout and two Presidents assassinated, Garfield and McKinley. Voter turnout peaked in the election of 1896 at 79.5%. Twenty-eight years later it troughed at 48.8% in 1924. While Republicans dominated the White House during the fifty years covered by Mr. Grinspan, elections were always close. The only two Presidents to be elected with more than 53% of the popular vote during that period were Ulysses Grant in 1872 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Presidential election winners in 1880,1884, 1888, 1892 and 1912 won with less than 50% of the popular vote.

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Even with a Deal, the Mullahs Will Pursue Nukes by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17400/iran-will-pursue-nukes

It is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

Tehran claimed that the “secret atomic warehouse,” located in a village of Turquz Abad in the suburbs of Tehran, was a place where carpets were cleaned.

The IAEA at first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.

The mullahs of Iran will not honor any deal with the international community. While the mullahs will gladly reap the profits of any nuclear deal and its lifting of the sanctions, their regime will continue pursuing its covert attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and overt attempts — with China — to take over the Middle East.

Just recently, we have seen Iran’s entrenchments in Syria and Iraq; its takeover of Lebanon by its proxy Hezbollah; its stepped-up aggression against Saudi Arabia by its proxy, the Houthis, and its 4,000-rocket war this month on the tiny country of Israel by yet another proxy, Hamas.

Whatever “deal” is struck in Vienna, Iran is not interested in “stabilizing” the Middle East. As the Biden administration has correctly pointed out, Iran’s leaders, with China, seem interested only in destabilizing, then dominating it.

The argument that negotiating and reaching a nuclear deal with the mullahs of Iran will curb their nuclear ambitions and prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons is, sadly, a dangerous fantasy.

The nuclear deal has sunset clauses that soon remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal expires. In short, the nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state after it concludes.

Even before that, however, it is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

It was not one year into the 2015 nuclear deal that two credible intelligence reports revealed that Iran had no intention of honoring the terms of the deal it had just reached with the Obama-Biden administration. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, revealed in its annual report in 2016 that the Iranian government had been pursuing a “clandestine” path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies “at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level.”

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Biden State Dept. Urging U.S. Embassies to Fly BLM Flags to Mark 1-Year Anniversary of George Floyd’s Death By Debra Heine

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/24/biden-state-dept-urging-u-s-embassies-to-fly-blm-flags-to-mark-1-year-anniversary-of-george-floyds-death/

The Biden State Department is encouraging all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” to display Marxist Black Lives Matter flags on May 25 to mark the one year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, according to a memo obtained by Human Events reporter Jack Posobiec.

The memo, signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the United States would be among “many in the international community” honoring the career criminal.

Summary: May 25 marks one year since the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year, the horrific video of Mr. Floyd’s final 9 minutes and 29 seconds went viral and spurred Black Lives Matter protests worldwide, in response to his senseless killing and to demand an end to systemic racism and police brutality. One year later, many in the international community will honor Mr. Floyd and acknowledge the long journey nations face to advance racial justice. Leading up to May 25, the Department has issued guidance on the use of Black Lives Matter language, banners, and flags. End Summary.

The vandalism and looting that followed the death of Floyd reportedly cost the insurance industry up to $2 billion, more than any other violent demonstrations in recent history. At least 25 Americans were killed during the unrest, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED).

Additionally, the radical organization’s “Defund the Police” agitation has led to a massive surge in violent crime throughout the nation.

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Time to Confront the U.S. Capitol Police About Its January 6 Lies House Republicans unanimously voted against Pelosi’s $60 million payback to the USCP. GOP senators should do the same. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/24/time-to-confront-the-u-s-capitol-police-about-its-january-6-lies/

The body of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick wasn’t even cold before his employer leveraged his untimely death to stoke more outrage about the events in the nation’s capital on January 6.

“At approximately 9:30 p.m. this evening . . . United States Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty,” read a press release issued January 7. “Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots [and] was injured while physically engaging with protesters.  He returned to his division office and collapsed.  He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners.”

The agency intentionally included the word “homicide” to suggest Sicknick was killed by homicidal Trump supporters. The next day, the New York Times, citing two anonymous law enforcement officials, claimed “pro-Trump rioters . . . overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

“With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”

We now know that gruesome account was completely fabricated. Can anyone doubt, given their flagrant partisanship in the wake of the Capitol protest, the U.S. Capitol Police planted the now-retracted fire extinguisher story?

Rather than act as a politically neutral law enforcement agency tasked with protecting government grounds and public officials on behalf of the federal taxpayers they serve, the USCP has contributed to the fabulism about January 6 while covering up other aspects to help Democrats and Joe Biden’s Justice Department keep the “insurrection” narrative alive. There’s no question many Capitol Police officers acted heroically in the face of several protesters bent on violence that day, however, USCP brass have helped Democrats define the January 6 groupthink from the start.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” former USCP chief Steven Sund wrote in a statement posted January 7. “[M]ake no mistake—these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”

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What is more sad than the occupation? The need for it. By Lev Tsitrin

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/what_is_more_sad_than_the_occupation_the_need_for_it.html

Not unnaturally, the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, and Arab-Jewish violence inside Israel, attracted much media attention. Day after day, pages of the New York Times were filled with reports and opinions from the region — often of very questionable quality. “Guest essays” from Palestinians in Gaza painted a picture of indiscriminate, brutal Israeli attacks on the innocent civilians huddled with their wives and children in helpless dread, not knowing what next to expect from the bare-fanged Israeli monsters.

Equally gruesome was an article showing the picture of wanton Jewish cruelty, that forgot to mention that the organized Jewish self-defense arose as a response to Arab attacks on Jewish Israelis inside Israel which inadequate policing failed to prevent. A gloomy New York Times story about Israel squashing ordinary Palestinians’ simple human happiness was also devoid of background and context.

This article provides the background and context that the New York Times ignored. Let’s fill in the gap by starting with an obvious question: Why is there an “occupation” in the first place? How did it come to be? Why hasn’t it ended long ago? I would argue that, ultimately, it is rooted in willful Palestinian ignorance of Arab history.

(Note: I am speaking here about title to the land, not the right to possession. For centuries, Muslims tolerated a handful of Jews on what was once malarial, swampy land. What they cannot tolerate is Jewish ownership of the land.)

It’s inconceivable that the Palestinians do not know the story of the Arab conquest that started immediately after Mohammed’s death. Within a few centuries, Muslim Arabs spread from what is today’s western Saudi Arabia to encompass half of the then-known world, from Spain in the west to the border of India in the east. The former Roman territory of Palestine (a name the Romans bestowed on the land) came under Arab dominance in about 636 AD. The Arab’s did not begin human settlement on that strip of land, of course. It had been populated since time immemorial, including the Jews who, by 636 had already lived there for close to 2,000 years.

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‘Temporary’ Protected Status: A Tool for Executive Mischief By Mark Krikorian

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/temporary-protected-status-a-tool-for-executive-mischief/

DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced over the weekend that his agency would grant a work-permit amnesty (under so-called Temporary Protected Status) to all Haitian illegal aliens in the U.S.

Haitians who were here at the time of that country’s devastating 2010 earthquake already had this “temporary” (but routinely renewed) status, but Saturday’s announcement reopened the TPS amnesty to all the new Haitian illegals who’ve come in the decade-plus since then. The Federal Register notice, which hasn’t been published yet, will offer DHS’s estimate of how many illegal aliens would benefit, but media reports put the number at 100,000 or more post–2010 illegals, on top of the 50,000 or so Haitians who already have TPS.

As my colleague (and former senior USCIS official) Rob Law noted, “The stated reasons by the Biden administration for a TPS designation do not conform with the statute.” In the press release announcing the amnesty, Mayorkas said “Haiti is currently experiencing serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic” – this is simply a less scatological version of Trump’s “shithole countries” crack, but even if true, none of this prevents the return of Haitian illegal aliens.

Despite the rhetoric of activists, TPS is not mainly about preventing the deportation of illegal aliens to a country; Biden halted deportations to Haiti shortly after taking office and ICE can exercise discretion like that whenever it chooses. The sole reason for a grant of TPS is to give illegal aliens work permits (and the Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses that follow it), formally embedding them in society and making the revocation of the amnesty extremely unlikely.

And, in fact. President Trump announced in 2018 the decision to allow Haitian TPS to expire the following year, but was barred by the courts from doing so, despite the law’s specific prohibition against judicial review of TPS decisions.

This is why legislative proposals to upgrade long-term TPS holders from their current amnesty-lite to amnesty-premium (i.e., a green card, potentially leading to citizenship) are fatally flawed. The version passed by the House in March includes just such a TPS amnesty upgrade as part of a broader bill — but does nothing to change the TPS process, guaranteeing the need for more amnesties in the future. But any arrangement that gives illegal aliens “temporary” work permits that keep getting renewed for 10 or 20 years is broken and needs to be fundamentally changed.

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

Posted 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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What Happened to the 10th Amendment? What Biden and his handlers intend to do with federal power. Robert Curry

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/what-happened-10th-amendment-frontpage-magazine/

 According to the Progressives, more government is the answer, always. For them, the constitutional limits on the power of government the founders had so carefully crafted are actually defects which must be eliminated. Their aim is total government; their strategy is to achieve total government step-by-step, progressively. 

Michael Finch, the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has an excellent article over at the American Thinker making clear where the Progressives are in their fight against the Constitution. He identifies what the Biden administration intends to accomplish—nothing less than completing the project of centralizing power in the federal government begun by the Progressives over a century ago. Finch very correctly observes that “the 10th Amendment, with its clear limitations on federal power, has been seriously eroded over the past century,” and that Biden and his handlers intend to put an end to the remaining limitations on federal power.

The Progressives certainly have gotten away with trampling on the 10th Amendment for more than a century, but that raises this question: how did they manage to get away with doing that? 

The answer is that the Progressives tricked Americans into repealing the 10th Amendment without realizing that was what they were doing. It was very cleverly done, so cleverly that even today Americans by and large do not understand what happened. When in 1913 America approved the 17th Amendment, the amendment that provided for the direct election of senators, the 10th Amendment was doomed.

How can that be? After all, the 10th Amendment says nothing about the election of senators. The point of the all-important 10th Amendment is that the Founders created a federal government of strictly limited powers. Here it is in full:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10th says the powers of the federal government (here referred to as “the United States”) are limited to the enumerated powers, the limited powers assigned it in the Constitution; the individual states (here referred to as “the States”) retain all their powers not delegated to the federal government. But the important point for us to understand is that the Founders’ method for selecting senators was the key to keeping the powers of the federal government limited. 

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Take Heart, America: You Are Not Done Yet You have the fight within you. Katie Hopkins

Posted By on May 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/take-heart-america-you-are-not-done-yet-katie-hopkins/

Have you stopped watching the news, or reading traditional media?

A cursory glance across today’s BBC headlines exemplifies the worst of it:

‘Germany bans travelers from the UK!’

‘CDC advises Americans not to kiss chickens!’ (not a joke)

‘Water so toxic it could burn your eyes!’

‘Should all children get the COVID vaccine!’

It is hard to imagine a world more utterly at odds with itself than the one we are living in now. I just took a break from my screen to grab some breakfast and was greeted by this:

By the time some poor kitchen staffer wrapped these apples, two meters of plastic wrap have been used unnecessarily and most of these unappetizing things will hit the trash — without so much as a bite being taken from them.

I wonder: Just who we are saving and from what?

Certainly not ourselves from our own insanity.

But save ourselves we must. We cannot simply resign ourselves to looking the other way, or avoiding all the nonsense we are surrounded by. Our children remind us daily that we have to find a way to endure, and to prevail through this to get to the other side of it and to try and restore some kind of normality or dignity to humanity or the places we want to live.