Israel’s Sovereignty Claims Over The Jordan Valley Are Legitimate Erielle Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/11/israels-sovereignty-claims-over-the-jordan-valley-are-legitimate/

A nation cannot annex land over which it already has sovereign claims.
September 11, 2019 By Erielle Davidson

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Tuesday regarding his plan to formalize Israeli sovereignty in Jordan Valley has sent shockwaves across the world. However, much of the outrage has stemmed from a misunderstanding about Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and historical claims over the region. Even the standard newspaper accounts of Netanyahu’s plans as envisioning the “annexation” of territory is inaccurate. 

Netanyahu never said “annexation.” Instead, he spoke of “applying sovereignty” to refer to Israel’s territorial claims over the Jordan Valley. International outlets, particularly left-leaning ones, have referred to Netanyahu’s campaign promise as a promise to annex land. But there is a reason for the PM’s careful choice of wording, and for its mistranslation and misrepresentation abroad.

A nation cannot annex land over which it already has sovereign claims. Netanyahu purposefully referred to the process as an application of Israeli sovereignty, abstaining from using the Hebrew word for annexation, sipuach. As Eugene Kontorovich, director of the International Law Department at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, noted, Netanyahu’s proclamation is about “translating long-standing Israeli consensus into action.”

Warren Mimics Bernie’s Promotion Of Anti-Semite Linda Sarsour To Campaign Surrogate By Warren Henry

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/11/warren-mimics-bernies-promotion-anti-semite-linda-sarsour-campaign-surrogate/

Given Linda Sarsour’s record, her claim that she supports Bernie Sanders because of rising anti-Semitism in America is irony thick enough to cut with a chainsaw.

Personnel is policy, or so the saying goes. So it is troubling that the two leading left-wing presidential candidates—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—are empowering people who at best hate Israel and support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement intended to destroy the Jewish state.

Over the weekend, Sanders tweeted a video identifying Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate:

Bernie Sanders

✔ @BernieSanders

“I would be so proud to win, but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president this country has ever seen and for his name to be Bernard Sanders.” –@lsarsour

Sarsour’s record on Israel and Jews is no secret. She supports a one-state solution to Palestinian attacks on Israel that would effectively destroy the Jewish state. In 2012, she tweeted that “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” She has claimed Zionists cannot be feminists. Sarsour supports the BDS campaign which, as Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt notes, “encourages and spreads anti-Semitism.”

In 2017, she literally embraced Rasmea Odeh, a convicted terrorist who killed two Hebrew University students in 1969. At last year’s convention of the Islamic Society of North America, she accused the Israeli police and military of training American police to kill blacks, and opposed humanizing Israelis.

Two names who would give Trump an all-star security team after Bolton By John Solomon

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/460829-two-names-who-would-give-trump-an-all-star-security-team-after-bolton

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump knows exactly what he wants when it comes to foreign policy. He wants a clear definition of the American strategic interest across the globe and a commitment that war is always a tool of last resort. 

His stubborn loyalty to those two objectives sometimes is derided as nationalistic and non-interventionist by his critics.

But for those of us old enough to remember, those principles used to be endemic to U.S. foreign policy for decades, until Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took the Iranian appeasement bait and George W. Bush mispositioned America as the unrelenting, trigger-happy global cop.

The murky foreign policies of the past two decades moved America away from defining its strategic interest on each global issue to a more populist, hair-trigger approach, giving us such blunders as Bush’s bogus Iraq WMD claim and Obama’s feckless erosion of a red line in Syria.

With John Bolton’s departure as the president’s national security adviser on Tuesday, President Trump has the rare opportunity to restore the American strategic interest to foreign policy and create a clear global doctrine to govern for years to come.

But it will require something he hasn’t always done well — picking the right people.

Never Forget: “Ecumenical” 9/11 Al-Azhar Imam of Manhattan’s Largest Islamic Center Was Viscerally Anti-American and Rife With Islamic Jew-Hatred Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/never-forget-ecumenical-9-11-al-azhar-imam-of-manhattans-largest-islamic-center-was-viscerally-anti-american-and-rife-with-islamic-jew-hatred/

Since its founding in 973 C.E., Al Azhar University (and its mosque) have represented the apogee of Islamic religious education, which evolved into the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gameia, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S., and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, provided a very concrete and disturbing example of the authoritative Al-Azhar Islamic mindset exported to America.

Within three days of the 9/11 jihad carnage al-Gameia, “known for his moderate views,” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 25, 2001; p. 6]  sermonized “in English calling for peace, healing, and love among people of all religions.” [Tampa Bay Times Oct. 24, 2001; p. 20] The good Sheikh struck an entirely different chord when he was interviewed for an Al-Azhar University website, on October 4, 2001. Sheikh Gameia returned to Egypt after September 11, 2001 alleging, without any substantiation, that he was being “harassed.” Gameia’s interview (original Arabic; extracts translated here) was rife with conspiratorial Islamic antisemitism, which riveted upon his invocation of the central Koranic motifs of Jew-hatred, while equating Jews and Zionists. Al-Azhar’s representative to the U.S. melded this sacralized anti-Jewish bigotry to virulent calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews.

On the solemn 18th anniversary of the calamitous 9/11 jihad terror depredations, Gameia’s behaviors and remarks stand as a lasting, res ipsa loquitur testament to the hateful duplicity inculcated by authoritative, mainstream, institutional Islam.

Calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews

The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change II – Debunking the Bunk – hoax 46 by Linda Goudsmit

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/23198/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-climate-change-ii

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The humanitarian hoax of climate change is so enormous and far-reaching that one article on the subject is simply not enough.

My first article, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 4, was published two years ago on 7.21.2017. The second, The Riddle of Climate Change, published on 2.27.19 continued the discussion. Now it is necessary to explore the ever-expanding climate change hoax and examine the progress the hucksters have made in advance of the pivotal 2020 elections.

Let’s begin with huckster-in-chief Barack Obama and his recent staggeringly hypocritical purchase of a 15 million dollar waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. Why would Obama purchase a waterfront mansion doomed to sink underwater in twelve years? He wouldn’t. Let’s review.

In Obama’s first inaugural address 1.20.09 he pledged to “roll back the specter of a warming planet.” In his second inaugural address 1.21.13 he affirmed climate change saying: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” He went on to shame anyone who disagreed with his assessment saying, “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.”

The overwhelming judgment of science?? Why did Obama ignore the damning 2009 Climategate scandal, NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer’s 2010 book, and later the 2014 Senate testimony of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore? Let’s find out.

“Climategate is the scandal that erupted on 11.19.09 when a collection of email messages, data files and data processing programs were leaked from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) located in the UK, revealing scientific fraud and data manipulation by scientists concerning the global warming theory. Climategate is said to have revealed the biggest scientific hoax in world history.

Brexit and the Deficiencies of Parliament by Malcolm Lowe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14849/brexit-parliament

What has characterized the last year of UK politics is that individual MPs in the various parties have begun to seek the same freedom of action as US Members of Congress. So far, however, they are both fearful of suffering the same fate as the 21 banned by Johnson and remain inexperienced in the exercise of such freedom.

Johnson now has two alternatives. One is to reinstate the 21. His defenders claim that this would encourage similar defections in the future. The other alternative is to stick to his unpopular decision and risk being dismissed himself by his party. Either way, the unwitting heritage of Johnson may include the end of the tyrannical powers of the UK PM.

The Bank of England in its latest report estimates that the consequences of no-deal on October 31 will be less dire than it thought a year ago, but dire they will be: GDP will shrink by 5.5%, inflation will rise from 2% to over 5%, unemployment will “surge to 7% rather than 7.5%, up from a current 45-year low of 3.8%.” In short, a very healthy economy will turn into a problematic economy. The most worrying problem, however, is that the Bank is engaged in guesswork about an event without precedent. If things turn out much better or much worse than estimated, nobody should be surprised that the Bank got it wrong.

It is remarkable that the UK Parliament has spent almost a year of debates about the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May’s government and the European Union. Indeed, about one small detail of that deal. We shall briefly describe what that detail is before explaining that the inordinate resulting delay reflects deep and longstanding dysfunction in the whole parliamentary system of the UK.

The deal consisted of two documents, the Withdrawal Agreement (WA, 585 pages) and the Framework for the Future Relationship (FFR, 26 pages). Most of the WA consists of regulations obviously needed for winding up UK participation in EU institutions, settling mutual debts, safeguarding the interests of UK citizens resident in the EU and vice versa, and the like. Even Boris Johnson regards all that as basically good and necessary.

The bone of contention is rather the so-called “Backstop” or (properly) the “Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.” This is a set of procedures designed to preserve the current “soft border” between the two parts of Ireland until the Protocol can be replaced via the negotiations that will turn the FFR from a shortlist of intentions into a permanent relationship between the UK and the EU. At 174 pages, it is nearly a third of the WA. Yet the real contention is just about Article 20 of the Protocol – a mere page and a half out of a total of over 600 pages.

Why Egypt Does Not Want to Help Gaza by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14859/egypt-gaza-help

Israel’s goodwill gestures, however, have so far failed to deter Hamas and other Palestinian groups from repeatedly violating the ceasefire understandings.

Israel is prepared to do whatever is required to help the Palestinians in return for a cessation of terrorist attacks against Israel. Meanwhile, the Egyptians themselves offer nothing but broken promises regarding the crisis in the Gaza Strip. Egyptian policy, it appears, is based on the assumption that the Gaza Strip is – and must remain – solely the problem of Israel.

Why do Egyptians have to travel all the way to Israel to discuss supplying the Gaza Strip with food, medicine and fuel (through Israel) when Egypt can easily do so through its shared border with the Gaza Strip? The world seems to have forgotten that the Gaza Strip has a shared border not only with Israel, but with Egypt as well.

Egypt’s shifting and sometimes contradictory policy toward the Gaza Strip seems to have one goal: to divert attention from Cairo’s responsibility for the ongoing plight of its Palestinian neighbors.

Here is what Egypt and the Arab states should be telling Israel: “Thank you for all that you have done so far to help the people of the Gaza Strip. However, these are our Arab brothers. Therefore, it seems fair that we step in and assume this burden.”

Egypt has resumed its mediation efforts to prevent an all-out military confrontation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this week, senior officials from Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat) who visited the Gaza Strip reportedly relayed to Hamas leaders a message from Israel: it promised to “ease restrictions” on the Palestinians in return for a cessation of anti-Israel terrorist attacks.

A ‘Conservative Case’ for Carbon Taxes That Isn’t Julie Kelly

amgreatness.com/2019/09/10/a-conservative-case-for-carbon-taxes-that-isnt/

One of the conservative movement’s biggest defeats over the past two decades has been its failure to strip the gears of the climate-change propaganda machine.

With few exceptions—among them the Heartland Institute, former Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and a handful of conservative commentators—Republicans surrendered to the climate cabal’s 20-year rampage in our public schools, the news media, and statehouses from coast to coast.

K-12 school textbooks now are filled with dire predictions about anthropogenic global warming and college campuses administer nonstop brainwashing on the subject while dedicating enormous amounts of publicly funded “research” to give an academic mooring to climate hysteria. Young people are suffering from any number of climate-fueled panic disorders as mental health professionals figure out how they, too, can cash in on the climate racket.

President Obama called climate change a bigger global threat than Islamic terrorism; his political progeny now are foot-stomping their way around Capitol Hill wielding copies of the Green New Deal while his wannabe successors embarrass themselves during cable news forums and campaign events by proposing outlandish solutions to anthropogenic global warming.

This political phenomenon took hold as Republicans either sat idle or were coaxed into acquiescence by climate bullies—that is, until President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and empowered his Republican administration to dismantle President Obama’s climate legacy as quickly as possible.

Republicans Prepare to Sell Out (As Usual)

John Bolton’s Art Of The Non-Deal

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/11/john-boltons-art-of-the-non-deal/

What it takes to survive for long in the Trump White House would fill a tome that may command a seven-figure advance for whoever ends up being qualified to write it. But whatever now-ex National Security Adviser John Bolton ends up writing might solve an even more perplexing mystery: What is really at the heart of this president’s foreign policy?

It cannot be denied that Donald Trump is a hawk, despite his rhetoric sometimes indicating otherwise. He backed large increases in Pentagon spending during his first two years and this year focused on out-maneuvering the Democrats’ majority in the House on federal budget caps to get another increase for fiscal 2020, irking fiscal conservatives as well as dovish liberals. And, of course, Trump used force last year against Syria.

He has also risked military conflict with Iran over scrapping the nuclear deal President Barack Obama agreed to, driving the left to warn of a spiral of dire consequences.

But there is also the Donald Trump whose son-in-law Jared Kushner aspires to solve the unsolvable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elements of Kushner’s proposal that were floated in June, despite its including a $50 billion handout, were rejected out of hand by Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

There is the Donald Trump who decided to be the first U.S. president to negotiate face-to-face with a North Korean ruler, despite the risks of it ending in monumental embarrassment for the United States. And who now seeks an open-ended meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose constant smile hides a long history of shrewdly practicing anti-Western deceit at the negotiating table.

It’s no secret to anyone that Trump likes to win at that same negotiating table, particularly when the odds are against victory. “One of the keys to thinking big is total focus,” his “The Art of The Deal,” written more than 30 years ago, says. “I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs.” In New York real estate, Trump adds, “you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. I happen to love to go up against these guys, and I love to beat them.”

The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs A close look at the plight of an ancient Christian community Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274903/21-journey-land-coptic-martyrs-raymond-ibrahim

A review of “The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs” by Martin Mosebach.

To learn as much as possible of the 21 Coptic Christians martyred for refusing to recant their faith at the hands of the Islamic State (“ISIS”) on the shores of Libya in 2015, writer Martin Mosebach traveled to their Egyptian homeland, where he interviewed family members, local clergymen, and generally took in the culture and atmosphere of Coptic living.

The result is an account that alternates between tragedy and triumph—between senseless deaths and staunch perseverance, past and present.  Because martyrdom is such a normal aspect of Coptic experience, when Mosebach “later asked myself what I had actually learned about the martyrs during my weeks in El-Aour,” where most of them lived, “I was at a bit of a loss.”  Neither the Coptic Church (historically known as the “Church of Martyrs”), nor the relatives of the slain, understood the latter’s martyrdom as something out of the ordinary or in need of elaboration.  The martyred—menial workers who spent their lives earning and sending money back to their families in Egypt—did not even seem to matter much as individuals but rather representatives of the collective.

Mosebach still managed to gather enough firsthand information to offer a compelling theory on the series of events that led to their slaughter.  The narrative includes an extra pious ringleader who inspired his fellow captives to persevere against beatings and death threats, and an ISIS guard who reportedly converted to Christianity and fled after witnessing their staunch faith.