NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Peter Smith Trump and Russia: The Endless Beat-up

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

Probes, spurious confections, bogus dossiers … and all in regard to what exactly? No one really knows, other than what should be obvious to all who have watched the Left and its media auxilliaries in action: their trade is lies and distortions in which no conservative should invest an ounce of credence.

I have just finished reading a piece by Melanie Phillips on Donald Trump. It was good piece and she was on his side. But how many conservatives are willing to praise Trump without succumbing to the obviously overpowering urge to distance themselves from his faults. Very few and Ms Phillips is not one of them.

Where Trump is concerned almost all conservatives suffer from delusions of moral superiority. They shouldn’t. The miners whose jobs he is saving don’t care about his etiquette.

This is another kind of ‘supportive’ conservative response. I heard this kind of thing after The Washington Post reported anonymous sources claiming that Trump had recklessly shared classified information with the Russian foreign minister. “He’s not a politician and makes missteps.” “He’s not the only senior politician who has let out information he shouldn’t have.”

The problem with these kinds of excuses for his behaviour is that there is no evidence that he shared information inappropriately. His national security advisor, General McMaster, who was in the room, categorically explained on separate occasions that the sharing was appropriate. Does that not matter?

Imagine being accused of doing something you claim, with authoritative backing, that you didn’t do and your putative friends respond by making excuses for your misstep. Has intelligence plummeted in recent years? I would say that it has.

Then there is the unseen Comey note of a meeting he had with Trump in February, reported in The New York Times, courtesy of yet another anonymous source. Were the contents leaked by Comey? Would he sink so low so quickly? Who knows?

If the note exists and is a faithful recording, Trump apparently expressed a hope that Comey would let any investigation of General Flynn pass because he was a good guy. “I hope you can see your way to letting this go,” he said, according to the anonymous source.

Expressing a hope isn’t obstructing an investigation and, crucially, Comey is on the record in May as saying that there had been no attempt made by anyone to interfere with any FBI investigation. End of story, or it should be among conservative commentators.

Conservative supporters of Trump can’t afford to be only half-in. The left are one hundred percent in to destroy Trump. And the never-Trumps, like bitter and twisted John McCain and numbers of precious conservative journalists, like, say, Jonah Goldberg of National Review, chip away whenever the opportunity arises. Death by a thousand chips is in the offing.

Make no mistake; Trump presents a threat because his policies and his determination and resolution have a chance of bringing America back from the brink of entrenched tribal divisions and economic malaise. Democrats and their media pals cannot afford to let that happen. Too many voters might see the light. Destroying Trump is the way to prevent it. How to do it? Come up with a big fat lie. Invent a Russian connection.

For almost a year the FBI and other agencies have laboured over the possibility of collusion between Trump’s campaign staff and the Russians. A trumped up lurid dossier of sexual exploits in a Russian hotel underscores the fictional tabloid narrative. Not a scintilla of evidence has been found. And, in any event, what is the crime under investigation? The standard, as under Stalin, appears to be back: “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

UCLA ‘Afrikan Student Union’ demands a building plus $40 million By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

A demand for $40 million normally is the stuff of thriller movies, with British-accented villain threatening to blow up stuff or kill the governor’s daughter or some similar unspeakable horror. Supervillain territory. But the demand of the UCLA “Afrikan Student Union” for a building plus 40 mill carries no threat that I can find. Other than the implicit threat to cry racism and demonstrate, I suppose. Still, I have to credit them for chutzpah. The UCLA Daily Bruin reports:

The Afrikan Student Union called on UCLA to create a Black Resource Center and a $40 million endowment to address African-American underrepresentation on campus in a list of demands it released Thursday [May 11].

Fourth-year philosophy and African American Studies student and Afrikan Student Union Chair Alicia Frison said the group worked on the demands throughout the year and decided to release the list now in response to recent incidents affecting African-American students.

“This year will be the 51st year the Afrikan Student Union is on campus,” ASU wrote in a statement, “however, 50 years later we are struggling with many of the same issues as our ancestors and elders dealt with in 1966. This is unacceptable.”

Ms. Frison: is that a gang sign in your left hand? (Photo: Daily Bruin)

The grievances listed by the “Afrikan” students are pretty weak beer:

On April 30, a picture that showed USAC President Danny Siegel holding up a gang sign was leaked, and on the same day there was a shooting near University of California, San Diego targeting African-American individuals. ASU also cited racist stickers posted around the offices of the Academic Advancement Program as a reason for releasing its list of demands.

The poor snowflakes have no idea or concern for how many taxpayers had to skimp and go without in orer to pay their huge California tax bill. They must think that $40 million is chicken feed:

“$40 million is just a drop in the bucket for the university,” Frison said. “Berkeley already has a $30 to $40 million endowment even though they have less African American students.”

I think she means “fewer” students.

Here is thought for Ms. Frison: how about raising money for the endowment on your own? Maybe get a job and start saving.

EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Academic hoaxers convince journal to publish ‘Penis causes climate change’ paper By Rick Moran !!!!!?????

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

Two academics submitted a paper to a publication called “Cogent Social Sciences” that exposed the entire academic “discipline” of “Gender Studies” to ridicule.

The professors – Peter Boghossian, a full-time faculty member in the Philosophy department at Portland State University, and James Lindsay, who has a doctorate in math and a background in physics – claimed in the paper that the male penis is not a genital organ, but rather a “social construct” and that male genitalia causes global warming.

The paper was laughably peer reviewed and published with only a few changes.

Breitbart’s James Delingpole recalls a similar hoax from the 1990’s:

They were hoping to emulate probably the most famous academic hoax in recent years: the Sokal Hoax – named after NYU and UCL physics professor Alan Sokal – who in 1996 persuaded an academic journal called Social Text to accept a paper titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.

Sokal’s paper – comprising pages of impressive-sounding but meaningless pseudo-academic jargon – was written in part to demonstrate that humanities journals will publish pretty much anything so long as it sounds like “proper leftist thought;” and partly in order to send up the absurdity of so much post-modernist social science.

So, for this new spoof, Boghossian and Lindsay were careful to throw in lots of signifier phrases to indicate fashionable anti-male bias:

We intended to test the hypothesis that flattery of the academic Left’s moral architecture in general, and of the moral orthodoxy in gender studies in particular, is the overwhelming determiner of publication in an academic journal in the field. That is, we sought to demonstrate that a desire for a certain moral view of the world to be validated could overcome the critical assessment required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we suspected that gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil. On the evidence, our suspicion was justified.

They also took care to make it completely incomprehensible.

We didn’t try to make the paper coherent; instead, we stuffed it full of jargon (like “discursive” and “isomorphism”), nonsense (like arguing that hypermasculine men are both inside and outside of certain discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like “pre-post-patriarchal society”), lewd references to slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regarding men (including referring to some men who choose not to have children as being “unable to coerce a mate”), and allusions to rape (we stated that “manspreading,” a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is “akin to raping the empty space around him”). After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn’t say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.

Obscuring ignorant thought by filling an academic paper with incomprehensible jargon is the post-modernist way. When you reject context and definitions in favor of deconstructionism, all original intent of the author is lost and you can substitute any meaning you wish as long as it conforms to the leftist tenets accepted by other academics.

The hoaxers simply took this notion to its logical – and humorous – extreme.

More than anything, the hoaxers proved that most academics in these fake disciplines have no sense of humor whatsoever. If they did, they would have immediately recognized how stupid the hoaxers’ conclusions were.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

PayPal, the Palestinians, and Problems By Mike Konrad

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

There is a campaign, which ironically started in the United States, but which has now spread all over the world, to have PayPal, the internet payment processing company, extend its services to Palestine. No matter what happens, this proposal is fraught with landmines.

PayPal offers its services to over 200 countries, in at least 25 currencies. So its scope is pretty much universal, with the exception of a few areas. There ia a rogue’s gallery of countries which are not connected to PayPal, but only a few. Many of those are pretty much totalitarian. The rest are prohibited because of concerns that payments would be either fraudulent or used to fund illegal or terrorist causes.

This reluctance to connect PayPal to Palestine has been a source of major criticism from around the world, especially since PayPal does operate in nearby adjacent Jewish communities. It is preventing a large community of well-educated IT professionals in the contested areas and Gaza from getting employment — especially needed for those stuck on the wrong side of the security fence, where unemployment is rampant.

The American Group, A4VPE (Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy), has been running a major campaign to bring PayPal to the contested areas. In August of 2016, they sent an open letter to the President of PayPal, Mr. Dan Shulman.

We have been told that PayPal is concerned about the compliance investments required to enter the Palestinian market. We believe such costs have been greatly overestimated. The U.S. Treasury Department has spent a great deal of time working with the Palestine Monetary Authority to strengthen safeguards against abuse. PayPal currently operates in over 203 countries including places with major problems of corruption and terrorism like Somalia and Yemen. We are confident that Palestine will prove a much easier place to profitably do business than these and other markets that PayPal has already entered.

In addition to business reasons, there are also ethical reasons for PayPal to enter the Palestinian market. PayPal’s decision to launch its service in Israel for Israeli bank customers means that it inadvertently made its services freely available to Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians living in close proximity to those settlers do not, however, have access as PayPal doesn’t work with Palestinian banks and Palestinians are unable to establish Israeli bank accounts. — A4VPE

Technically, there is no reason that PayPal could not be extended to the Palestinian areas, if technology were the only concern as Tech Crunch noted:

PayPal currently does not work for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, but does work for Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal by international law… [H]ow an Internet platform could work in some areas of a country but not in another — where the areas in question are in some cases literally meters apart — is puzzling to say the least. — Tech Crunch (emphasis mine)

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS: GOVERNORS OF ALL 50 STATES SIGN DECLARATION CONDEMNING ANTI-ISRAEL BDS MOVEMENT AS ANTITHETICAL TO AMERICAN VALUES

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

By: Max Gelber, United with Israelhttps://unitedwithisrael.org/all-us-state-governors-sign-anti-bds-declaration/?utm_source=

The governors of all 50 US states signed a declaration condemning the anti-Israel BDS movement as antithetical to American values.

The governors of all 50 US states on Thursday signed a statement declaring the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement as standing in opposition to their values and those of the US in general.

“The goals of the BDS movement are antithetical to our values and the values of our respective states, our support for Israel as a vital US ally, important economic partner and champion of freedom,” the letter states.

BDS seeks “to isolate Israel—a pluralistic nation with deep cultural, familial, security, educational, scientific and commercial bonds with our state and with the United States as a whole—rather than recognize the profound mutual benefits of our engagement with it. They malign a trusted ally that, while forced to defend itself against repeated and ongoing attempts to annihilate it, has consistently extended its hand in peace to its Palestinian neighbors and to states across the Middle East and around the world…

“At this critical time, in the face of the virulent movement to promote anti-Israel boycotts both in this country and around the globe, we strongly condemn the BDS movement as incompatible with the values of our states and our country,” the statement concludes.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) praised the governors for signing the declaration.

“Our nation’s 50 governors, as well as the District of Columbia mayor, recognize the pernicious goals of the BDS movement, which singles out Israel from among all the nations of the world for relentless and undue criticism, and whose efforts undermine the prospects for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace,” stated David Harris, CEO of AJC.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nasser’s Legacy on the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 War By Dr. Michael Sharnoff

Posted By on May 22nd, 2017

Cairo was the political capital of the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was the most charismatic ruler in the region, and he tried to become the undisputed leader of the Arab world. In his 1954 memoir, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Nasser revealed his vision of Egypt as a unique geostrategic influence in the African, Arab, and Islamic world. He believed Egypt was destined to play a pivotal role in Arab affairs.

Initially, Nasser was concerned primarily with consolidating power and expelling the British from Egypt. After stabilizing his rule by suppressing communists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, he championed pan-Arabism as a strategic tactic to unify the Arab world under his command. Pan-Arabism was a secular ideology that advocated Arab unity, freedom from foreign control, and the liberation of Palestine – a euphemism for a Palestinian state built on Israel’s ruins.

Nasser’s political star rose after he nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and subsequently survived a direct assault from the UK, France, and Israel. He graced international venues as a hero of the Nonaligned Movement, rubbing shoulders with established anti-imperialist leaders like Tito of Yugoslavia, Nehru of India, Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia. No major world leader could dispute Nasser’s growing popularity and legitimacy.

Through his spokesperson Muhammad Heikal, editor of Egypt’s state-run newspaper al-Ahram, Nasser adopted a brilliant strategic communications campaign to shape and influence public opinion. Cairo became the Arab capital of influence. Nasser’s policies were cautiously observed by Israel, neighboring Arab states, and the Western powers, as well as the Soviet Union. In the era of Cold War rivalry, Nasser adroitly played off the two rival superpowers to maximize his country’s economic, political, and military stature while offering minimal concessions.

Nasser’s Egypt demonstrated how a developing country with a large population could persevere in the face of tremendous economic, political, and military challenges. Despite the expectations of Western and Soviet intelligence officials, the regime did not collapse. Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip after the 1967 War, but Nasser managed to turn that stunning military defeat into a political victory. He employed skillful diplomacy at the UN to appease Moscow and the West in order to rebuild Egypt’s military and sustain his own unique leadership status in the Arab world.

Nasser remained defiant. Egypt endured, despite losing territory and suffering from a depressed economy due to a collapse in tourism and the closure of the Suez Canal. After the war, Egypt lost $30 million a month to lost Canal revenues and an additional $1.5 million in tourism each week. (The Canal remained closed until 1975, when Israel withdrew its troops from the east bank as part of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and the second Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement).

After Nasser’s untimely death in 1970, other Arab leaders like Qaddafi, Assad, and Saddam tried to replicate his successes – but none had the charisma or mandate to shape public opinion and extract concessions from Washington and Moscow. Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, long suppressed under Nasser, gradually resurfaced, capitalizing on the political and ideological vacuum.

Those movements argued that Muslims had become weak because Nasser, Qaddafi, Saddam, and Assad were not true believers. They had failed to implement sharia (Islamic law), aligned with kuffar (infidel) Western or Russian powers, and abandoned the pursuit of the liberation of Palestine. They had become apostates, unfit to rule, and should be replaced with Islamic governance.

The solution to secular pan-Arabism, in their view, was Islam. They promoted Islam as the only ideology with the capacity to satisfy Muslim aspirations. Secularism, nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and communism were foreign concepts incompatible with Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood expanded its influence through social services and redoubled its devotion to the eventual construction of an Islamic state governed by sharia. Extremist Islamist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS continue to seek to achieve these goals by engaging in terrorism against the West and committing genocide against non-conforming Muslims and ethnic and religious minorities.

The removal of Saddam and subsequent violence and instability of the 2003 Iraq War, the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world, and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accelerated the expansion of these non-state Islamist actors, as well as Iran. In this “new” Middle East, these players compete for influence while Egyptian and Arab leaders grapple with instability, insurgency, civil war, and failed states.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Statesmanlike Speech in Riyadh He deserves kudos, but he failed to address the key question of why Muslim societies produce so many terrorists. By Elliott Abrams

Posted By on May 21st, 2017

President Trump did himself a great deal of good in his Riyadh speech, but he left a gaping hole in his approach to terrorism.

To begin with the positive, he was presidential, indeed statesmanlike, in his delivery and in his conduct all weekend. The event itself — a meeting between the president of the United States and heads of government from more than 50 Muslim states — was unprecedented. To that was added sessions with Saudi leaders and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The President’s speech, replete with respect for Islam, added to the sense that far from being a hater of Islam, he was a Westerner approaching it with dignity and common sense. One possible effect: How might federal judges henceforth hold that his executive orders limiting access to the United States for certain Muslims are motivated by nothing more than pure hatred? They have relied on campaign rhetoric, but this speech showed (as have so many other Trump actions) that campaign rhetoric is no guide to his positions and motivations as president.

Trump was tough as nails on Iran, which will gratify his Saudi hosts and the many Americans who found the Obama approach unconscionable. Obama saw Iran as a potential partner in the Middle East and subordinated every American interest to getting his nuclear deal done. Trump made it clear that he has entirely jettisoned this approach.

Trump’s analysis of the terrorists was also powerful: They are nihilists, he suggested, not Muslims. Thus, he said: “Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith. Terrorists do not worship God. They worship death.”

The speech also called upon Muslim governments to be far more active in the fight against terrorism and extremism. He warned them that the United States could not and would not try to solve this problem for them: “It is a choice between two futures — and it is a choice America cannot make for you.” Among the already famous “Drive them out” lines was the first: “Drive them out of your places of worship.” This was as close as Trump came to stating clearly that Muslim extremism is a religious problem that has invaded mosques and in fact invaded Islam itself, and that Muslims need to clean out the networks of mosques and madrassas and imams upon which extremism feeds.

Trump was tough as nails on Iran, which will gratify his Saudi hosts and the many Americans who found the Obama approach unconscionable.

But two factors undermined the impact of Trump’s strong words about terrorism and extremism.

The first was that the speech was too discursive. He tried to cover too much, mentioned too many countries, and even included mention of bilateral U.S.–Saudi trade and arms deals. These had no place in a major speech about Islamist extremism. Trump called his announcement of the various deals totaling $400 billion “blessed news,” a bad misuse of the term “blessed” in a speech largely about religion.

The second factor was far more significant. Twice Trump called Islamist terrorism and extremism an “ideology,” suggesting that he understands it is a belief system. But he appeared to be arguing that military action alone would defeat it. It won’t: Islamist extremism is a terrible and dangerous idea, and it will not be defeated by military action alone. We need other, better ideas to battle against extremist ideas.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Saudi Speech: Pretty Good But one speech does not a policy make; it must be the beginning of a consistent approach in battling Islamist ideology. By Daniel Pipes

Posted By on May 21st, 2017

In Riyadh, on the first stop of his tri-monotheism tour that will take him to Jerusalem and Rome (sorry, Mecca was not available), Donald Trump gave a major speech on a wide range of topics: the Middle East, jihadi violence, Iran, an “Arab NATO,” and Islam. It’s a mixed performance, but overall positive.

First, what’s wrong with the 34-minute speech: It was incoherent, jumping from topic to topic and then back again. It was neither eloquent nor insightful (as in, “Terrorists do not worship God, they worship death”). In places, it consisted of Obama-like euphemisms, such as the statement that history’s great test stands before us, one goal that transcends every other consideration: “to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.”

And it was farcical to announce the opening in Riyadh (the headquarters of Wahhabism) of a Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. I bristled at Trump calling Saudi Arabia “sacred land.” I gagged on the warm praise for King Salman, someone implicated in contributing tens of millions of U.S. dollars during the 1990s to finance jihadi violence in Bosnia and Pakistan.

The context of the speech is acutely worrisome: U.S.–Saudi agreements totaling over $380 billion grants a tyrannical regime added influence over Americans. The $110 billion Saudi purchase of U.S. arms makes a vast arsenal available to a government whose goals differ profoundly from those of most Americans.

These not inconsiderable reservations aside, it was a good speech that signaled a major shift in the right direction from the Obama years — particularly with regard to Iran and Islam. Most important was Trump’s willingness to point to the ideology of Islamism as the enemy. This matters exceedingly for, just as a physician must first identify a medical problem before treating it, so a strategist must identify the enemy before defeating it. To talk about “evildoers,” “terrorists,” and “violent extremists” is to miss the enemy’s Islamic core.

On this point, the key passage of the speech (at timestamp 22:25) states:

There is still much work to do. That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.

The prepared text read “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups” but when speaking, Trump made these changes. While “Islamist” is more precise than “Islamic,” politically, both make the same point.

Most important was Trump’s willingness to point to the ideology of Islamism as the enemy. This matters exceedingly.

It was unprecedented and noteworthy for an American leader to declare this in a city that is not only the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but also the host of the Saudi-conjured Arab Islamic American Summit, attended by leaders from some 50 Muslim-majority countries. “I have your number,” Trump effectively announced. “So don’t play games with me.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians: Tomorrow’s Secret ‘Day of Rage’ by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 21st, 2017

What is really driving this Palestinian hatred of Trump and the U.S.? The Palestinians and the Arabs have long been at war with what they regard as U.S. bias in favor of Israel. What they mean is that U.S. support for Israel stands in their way of destroying Israel.

Abbas is not going to tell Trump about the “Day of Rage” because it flies in the face of his repeated claim that Palestinians are ready for peace and are even raising their children in a culture of peace.

Once again, Abbas is playing Americans and other Westerners for fools. His people remain unwilling to recognize Israel’s very right to exist as a state for Jews. And so, Abbas will talk peace and coexistence while his people organize yet another “Day of Rage.”

Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA), preparing to welcome U.S. President Donald Trump to Bethlehem, are seeking to create the impression that their sentiments are shared by their people. Yet many Palestinians are less than enthusiastic about the visit.

It is in the best interests of Abbas and the PA to hide the truth that many Palestinians view the U.S. as an Israel-loving enemy.

While the PA president and his aides attempt to bury that inconvenient fact, they are also doing their best to cover up the truth that many Palestinians have been radicalized to a point that they would rather aim a gun or knife at Israelis than aim for peace with them.

The strongest and most vocal protests against Trump’s visit have thus far come from Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians.

Ramallah is regularly described by Western journalists as a base for moderation and pragmatism. It is in this city that Abbas and the top PA leadership live and work.

In a statement published earlier this week, the National and Islamic Forces in Ramallah and El-Bireh, a coalition of various Palestinian political and terror groups, called for a “Day of Popular Rage” in the West Bank to protest the imminent presidential visit.

In Palestinian-speak, a “Day of Rage” is a call for intensified violence and terrorism directed mainly against Jews.

The term was formally introduced during the First Intifada, which erupted in late 1987, and consisted of stone and petrol-bomb attacks against Israel Defense Force soldiers and Jews residing in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, during the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Days of Rage were associated with suicide bombings, drive-by shootings and other acts of terrorism and assorted crimes perpetrated against Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as within Israel.

In recent years, Abbas’s Fatah faction and other groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have used different occasions to urge Palestinians to declare a Day of Rage against Israel.

Generally speaking, such calls come in response to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount — visits that have been taking place since East Jerusalem was liberated from Jordanian occupation in 1967.

The visits were temporarily suspended, however, for security reasons in the first years of the Second Intifada, out of concern for the safety of visitors. It is worth noting that non-Muslims areallowed to tour the Temple Mount, as has been true for the past five decades. The Palestinians, however, are specifically opposed to Jews visiting the site, under the false pretext that Jews are plotting to rebuild their Temple after destroying the Islamic holy sites there. This charge is, of course, another Palestinian blood libel against Jews.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Visit Cements Saudi Support, Avoids Thorny Regional Issues President’s message against terrorism and Iran is warmly received by leaders By William Mauldin

Posted By on May 21st, 2017

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s Middle East visit achieved a measure of foreign-policy success by shoring up U.S. alliances, distracting from the president’s domestic difficulties and sidestepping some of the thornier problems simmering in the region, according to lawmakers and Mideast experts.

In a speech in the Saudi Arabian capital, Mr. Trump challenged the heads of state in the region to help in “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires,” saying terrorists should be driven “out of this earth.” Mr. Trump also said “all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism,” without providing concrete details of U.S. strategy toward Tehran.

“This is someone who is making it clear that we’re making common cause with those who are prepared to take on ISIS and the Iranians,” said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. envoy in the region and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Mr. Trump’s messages were received warmly by the leaders in the region because their governments are some of the biggest targets for terrorism and are also under pressure from Iran, which supports militants in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

“It is to some extent preaching at the choir,” said Anthony Cordesman, strategy chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “All of this sends a kind of message about American resolve and American concern for its Arab allies.”

The visit served as reassurance for Saudi Arabia and allied nations after former President Barack Obama appeared to seek closer relations with Iran while negotiating a nuclear agreement with the country, and after the 2016 presidential campaign raised questions about the U.S. appetite for foreign entanglements.

Mr. Trump’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia and Israel before other countries—and his warm rhetoric for their leadership—signals a shift away from Mr. Obama’s policy in the region, which Mr. Trump has blamed for the turmoil there.

The trip also shows Mr. Trump appears eager to use his international authority to work with allies and court success on the global stage as he faces political headaches back home that may hamper his domestic goals, said Aaron David Miller, a former senior State Department official now at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. CONTINUE AT SITE