FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump Admin Prepares Exec Order to End Funding for UN Agencies Giving Full Membership to PA, PLO .By: Hana Levi Julian*****

Posted By on January 26th, 2017

The Trump administration is preparing two executive orders that are likely to cause an earthquake in the Middle East

The New York Times reported Wednesday in a breaking story that the staff of U.S. President Donald J. Trump is preparing an executive order that would terminate funding for any United Nations agency or other international organization that gives full membership to the Palestinian Authority or the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In addition, the order terminates funding for programs or activities that fund abortion or circumvent sanctions against Iran or North Korea.

According to the report, the draft order also calls for terminating funding for any organization that is “controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” or is held responsible for persecution of marginalized groups, or systematic violation of human rights.

Moreover, the order calls for a minimum 40 percent cut across the board in remaining U.S. funding of international organizations, and establishes a committee to make recommendations as to where the cuts should be made.

The list of potential targets includes funding for peacekeeping operations, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, aid to nations who “oppose important United States policies” and the United Nations Population Fund.

A second executive order calls for a review of all current and pending treaties with more than one other nation – applicable only to those not “directly related to national security, extradition or international trade”– and asks for recommendations on which to retain.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic? By: Alex Grobman

Posted By on January 26th, 2017

There seems to be no end to the myths surrounding the Jewish state. Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, an occupier of Palestinian Arab lands, and an international war criminal. On December 28, 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry added another canard to this litany when he warned that if Israel rejects a two-state solution, “it can be Jewish or it can be democratic-it cannot be both.”

Mr. Kerry, thereby, demonstrates his limited understanding of how Israel is governed as well as how against incredible odds the country remains both Jewish and democratic. Nor did the Obama administration even attempt to draw such a distinction in its outright support of the Muslim Brotherhood-based government of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt.

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, observed that the U.S. Britain and Canada are among the few countries in the world that have had continual democratic governments. Although from inception Israel has been threatened with extinction, she has never yielded to the wartime demands of instituting onerous restrictive laws that often destroy other democracies.

Equal Rights to All Even to Those who Refute Israel’s Right to Exist

If anything, the Palestinian Arab/Israeli conflict has “tempered” Israeli democracy, providing equal rights even to Arabs and Jews who refute her right to exist. “Is there another democracy,” Oren asks, “that would uphold the immunity of legislators who praise the terrorists sworn to destroy it? Where else could more than 5 percent of the population — the equivalent of 15 million Americans — rally in protest without incident and be protected by the police. And which country could rival the commitment to the rule of law…whose former president was convicted and jailed for sexual offenses by three Supreme Court justices — two women and an Arab? Israeli democracy, according to pollster Khalil Shikaki, topped the US as the most admired government in the world — by the Palestinians.” [1]

What is equally remarkable Oren opines, is that Israel was founded by Jews from autocratic societies who were forced to grapple with issues of identity and security that would have overwhelmed even the most seasoned democracies. These discussions occurred at a time when they were occupied in absorbing almost two million Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. [2]

A Nation-State where National Character and Language of the Arab Minority is Officially Recognized

While Israel’s institutions and principles of governing are democratic, the Jewish state is nevertheless different. Like Bulgaria, Greece, and Ireland, Israel is a nation-state, but with a large Arab minority, whose national character and language are officially recognized.

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Solid Start for Trump’s Border-Security and Immigration Policy

Posted By on January 26th, 2017

In September, Donald Trump laid out a ten-point plan for immigration, emphasizing border security, the enforcement of immigration laws, and the removal of criminal aliens. The president’s latest executive orders — one directing the construction of a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, the other stripping federal grant money from sanctuary cities — are a first step toward making good on those promises.

On Wednesday, the president ordered Executive Branch agencies “to deploy all lawful means to secure the Nation’s southern border,” which includes the “construction of a physical wall on the southern border.” The rough terrain along parts of the U.S.–Mexico border likely militates against the “big, beautiful wall” that Trump envisions, but erecting physical barriers along further stretches of the 2,000 miles dividing the U.S. from its southern neighbor is an obvious and long-neglected tool to help clamp down on America’s ongoing illegal-immigration problem.

The second order, focusing on “enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States,” directs the attorney general and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to deny federal grants to jurisdictions that refuse to comply with federal immigration law, insofar as they can do so within their legal authority.

These orders are a good start toward reorienting American immigration policy so that it favors the interests of American citizens over their foreign counterparts. However, they are only a start.

While the construction of a wall, and the potential deployment of technology such as below-ground sensors at the border, will be a helpful impediment to would-be lawbreakers, the crucial work will continue to be done by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agencies, which are woefully understaffed. Trump’s executive orders suggest bolstering these organizations with 10,000 and 5,000 new hires, respectively, and Trump has also announced the end of the catch-and-release policy that characterized the Obama administration’s approach to border security. Congress should work with him to secure both of those plans.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why I’m Not Sorry to See TPP Go The agreement was too protectionist, and it had too much potential to undermine American sovereignty. By Andrew C. McCarthy —

Posted By on January 26th, 2017

I’m not as sorry as the editors to see the Trans-Pacific Partnership laid to rest. Because I agree with our editorial on a number of points, and because I fear that what I dislike about TPP is actually appealing to President Trump (and likely to recur in any bilateral deals his administration strikes), it is worth adding a few thoughts of my own.

1. The manner in which the Obama administration went about negotiating TPP has been wrongly maligned, undoubtedly because of (and contributing to) the distaste in which international trade is held these days. I have negotiated about a million plea agreements, some of them quite complicated. Had they been negotiated out in the open, with running commentary on the possible terms by non-parties or agencies whose interests might be affected, they would never have been consummated. The moving parts of an international trade deal — even a bilateral one — make it infinitely more complex than a plea deal.

While Congress has a critical constitutional role in reviewing international agreements, it is the president’s job to conduct international relations and make treaties. Eleven other countries cannot be expected to negotiate with 535 legislators plus the executive branch. Thus, the complaint about Obama’s having conducted secret negotiations with foreign governments in order to spring a damaging agreement on the United States was meritless in the case of TPP. (It is an apt complaint in the case of the Iran nuclear deal, which Obama never intended as a treaty.)

While TPP could have been damaging, that is because of its terms, not the secrecy in which they were negotiated. The question was not whether Congress should have had the opportunity to review aspects of the deal while it was being negotiated. (Lawmakers did in fact have that opportunity, under conditions of confidentiality that were appropriate no matter how much Congress complained about them.) The question was whether Congress was given an opportunity for meaningful review after the agreement was finalized by the countries taking part. There is no doubt that legislators had that opportunity — and, indeed, that TPP could not have been imposed on the U.S. without their consent.

2. Which brings us to Trade-Promotion Authority — the “TPA” that, regrettably, was conflated with TPP in the public debate. I continue to believe that TPA, which obliges Congress to give the president an up-or-down vote without amendments after the president has negotiated an international agreement, not only makes eminent sense but is the best way to avoid bad international agreements.

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Soros And MasterCard Join Forces To Profit From Immigration The radical billionaire helped create the immigration crisis; now he wants to reap the rewards. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Radical currency speculator George Soros is scheming to profit from the illegal immigration crises in the United States and the European Union that he was instrumental in creating.

Soros traffics in revolution and human misery. His devious business deals have brought the financial systems of the United Kingdom and Malaysia to their knees. Soros helped finance the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” in then-Czechoslovakia. He acknowledged having orchestrated coups in Croatia, Georgia, Slovakia, and Yugoslavia.

Soros hates America. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States,” he has said. Soros praises Communist China effusively and has said the totalitarian nation—which cuts babies in unauthorized pregnancies from the wombs of their mothers, tortures and kills religious dissenters, and runs over eminent domain resisters with steam-rollers—has “a better-functioning government than the United States.” In the U.S. he has financed the violent, politically destabilizing Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements.

Now the preeminent funder of border-busting campaigns in the U.S. and overseas has entered into a partnership with credit card giant MasterCard Inc. to create something called Humanity Ventures.

In recent years Soros has focused on making grants through his Open Society Foundations to various nonprofits, but this new project has for-profit goals.

“Humanity Ventures is intended to be profitable so as to stimulate involvement from other businesspeople,” Soros and MasterCard said in a joint press release.

The claimed objective is to make the lives of “migrants” better through spending on education, health care, and economic development.

“Migrants are often forced into lives of despair in their host communities because they cannot gain access to financial, healthcare and government services,” they said, ignoring the veritable minefield of taxpayer-funded assistance available to illegal aliens in the U.S.

“Our potential investment in this social enterprise, coupled with MasterCard’s ability to create products that serve vulnerable communities, can show how private capital can play a constructive role in solving social problems.”

Any profit Soros and his billionaire buddies in the left-wing donors’ consortium, the Democracy Alliance, extract from the operations of Humanity Ventures can be used to fund more projects aimed at destroying Western culture, rule of law, individual rights and limited government. Perhaps the money can be used to finance the future presidential runs of Keith Ellison and Chelsea Clinton.

This new venture comes as countries like Soros’s native Hungary and Macedonia are threatening to kick his operations out.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anti-Trump Protesters Spat on Gold Star Families Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Remember when the media briefly decided that anyone who offends a Gold Star family was the worst human being in existence? Dissent is patriotic now. And how better to define dissent than spitting on Gold Star families?

Don’t worry, shortly Michael Moore will be on to explain that spitting on Gold Star families is truly the highest form of patriotism. And that their children died to protect the right of anti-Trump patriots to spit on them.

On Friday, Amy and I were assaulted by angry “protesters” outside the Renaissance Washington DC Hotel, where the American Legion hosted a tribute to Medal of Honor recipients at their Veterans Inaugural Ball. We were pushed by a man in a mask hiding his face. Our clothes were drawn on with permanent marker by other “protesters.” And we were called the most vile names I have ever heard as we entered and exited the venue.

What the individuals who assaulted us did not know is that I am the sister of Marine First Lt. Travis Manion, and Amy is the wife of Navy SEAL Lt. Brendan Looney, who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Travis was killed in 2007, and Brendan in 2010.

I doubt very much that they would have cared. If anything, it would have only encouraged the anti-American left.

Looney and Manion were initially late to the ball because they couldn’t get through “an angry mob in the street that was burning trash cans and smashing windows,” Manion wrote on Facebook. When they eventually got near the entrance a group of around 75 people tried separating them from the ball. It was as the two women walked through the crowd that people began pushing them and yelling insults.

“We understand more than most how fortunate we are to live in a country where we can demonstrate and share our different beliefs,” Manion wrote. “But my question for those who chose to take this route Friday is this: Are you truly accomplishing anything by inciting hate?”

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fordham University Rejects SJP SJP’s goals “clearly conflict with…the mission and values of the University.”Sara Dogan (Bravo Fordham!!!!)

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

In a rare but promising decision, Fordham University in New York has elected not to allow the formation of a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine on campus, citing the conflict between SJP’s emphasis on “polarization rather than dialogue” and its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

In a leaked email, Keith Eldredge, Dean of Students at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, wrote:

After consultation with numerous faculty, staff and students and my own deliberation, I have decided to deny the request to form a club known as Students for Justice in Palestine at Fordham University. While students are encouraged to promote diverse political points of view, and we encourage conversation and debate on all topics, I cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country, when these goals clearly conflict with and run contrary to the mission and values of the University.

There is perhaps no more complex topic than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it is a topic that often leads to polarization rather than dialogue. The purpose of the organization as stated in the proposed club constitution points toward that polarization. Specifically, the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel presents a barrier to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding.

In a statement announcing their vote to approve the club, United Student Government at Lincoln Center acknowledged the need for open, academic discussion and the promotion of intellectual rigor on campus; however, I disagree that the proposal to form a club affiliated with the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization is the best way to provide this. I welcome continued conversation about alternative ways to promote awareness of this important conflict and the issues that surround it from multiple perspectives.

Dean Eldredge’s email correctly points to several highly problematic facets of SJP’s mission and strategy including its policy of rejecting the “normalization” of relations with any pro-Israel individuals or groups, which stands in blatant opposition to the spirit of open discussion which liberal arts universities aim to foster. This policy has led SJP to reject overtures of cooperation from pro-Israel groups, even when the two organizations are agreed upon a common issue.

At San Diego State University, for instance, the pro-Israel campus group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) attempted to co-sign a petition to make the campus more inclusive for Muslims after a Muslim student was assaulted on campus. SDSU-SJP refused to allow SSI to co-sign the petition claiming that it “didn’t serve the interests of the community.” According to members of SSI, “Out of the over 30 organizations that had signed the document, SSI was the only organization to be excluded from the statement.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

To Modulate Drug Prices, We Need Less Regulation and More Competition Allowing drugs in the U.S. that have been approved abroad would greatly help patients, providers, and producers. By Henry I. Miller & John J. Cohrssen

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

To control escalating U.S. drug prices that seem to be disconnected from research, development, and manufacturing costs, an array of politicians, policy wonks, and pundits have proposed a spectrum of government interventions. The Senate Special Committee on Aging is the latest to weigh in, with a report that makes various recommendations.

Characteristically, it focuses on high-profile abuses and proposes only tepid measures to “rein in price spikes in off-patent, decades-old drugs purchased by companies that did not bear the drugs’ research and development costs.”

The report urged, for example, that the Food and Drug Administration be given expanded authority to allow imports of medicines from countries with drug-safety standards similar to those in the United States, but only in narrowly defined circumstances, such as when consumers face sharp, sudden increases in the price of off-patent drugs that have no competition. (Regulators already have the ability to allow imports when there are acute critical shortages of approved drugs in this country.) But the Senate recommendations would require the imports to end “as soon as the monopoly was broken up.”

There is certainly sympathy from the incoming administration for reform of drug regulation. President Trump pledged during the campaign to “remove barriers to entry” of “imported safe and dependable drugs from overseas,” and he told Time magazine after the election: “I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what’s happened with drug prices.”

That’s a widely shared sentiment, but pharmaceutical pricing is neither simple nor transparent, not only because of global and national competition, but also because of inconsistent national laws, individual company practices, industry-wide insurance-company discounts, and government rules that require preferential pricing, rebates, and discounts. American politicians often cite foreign countries’ approaches to controlling prices, but their very different market and reimbursement systems make it difficult to judge the extent to which they are applicable to the United States.

Foreign governments’ cost savings arise from price controls and refusal to pay for drugs that do not show sufficient medical benefit to justify the cost. This sort of technology assessment is not done routinely in the United States. “If it’s an FDA-approved drug and prescribed by a duly licensed physician, Medicare will cover it,” notes Gail Wilensky, who ran U.S. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement in the 1990s. Non-government insurers also often (but not always) cover approved drugs and medical devices.

Government-imposed price controls on a wide variety of goods have an extensive and unhappy history in the United States. At various times the federal government, states, and even localities have imposed price controls on items such as oil, electricity, apartment rents, food, and plane fares, but the benefits tend to be short-term at best, with unintended consequences including consumer dissatisfaction from shortages and curtailed industrial production, investment, and innovation.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bailing Out the Palestinian Authority In its final hours, the Obama administration transferred $221 million to the Palestinian Authority, which gives payments to terrorists and their families. By Elliot Kaufman —

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry surprised many observers by devoting so much of their waning time in office to excoriating Israel. But it turns out they had more mischief planned: a last-minute Palestinian bailout.

Only three hours before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Obama administration notified Congress that it would send $221 million to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The funding had previously been blocked by two separate congressional holds, which are usually respected by the executive branch.

The Obama administration informed Congress that the money would fund humanitarian projects as well as political and security reforms to help prepare for a future Palestinian state. However, only the willfully blind can deny that this money will also finance terrorism and ultimately prolong the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Since 2004, Palestinian law has explicitly mandated large monthly payments to the families of terrorists who attack Israel, as well as salaries and jobs for the terrorists on their release from Israeli jails. The PA structures the payments so as to make its incentive structure crystal clear: The more Israelis you wound or kill, the more money your family will receive.

Some families of terrorists can even receive up to $3,100 per month — so long as their relative has killed many Israelis and either died during the attack or was sentenced to over 30 years in Israeli jail. By comparison, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reports that the average Palestinian salary is just over $276 per month.

These payments add up. In 2014, Israel estimated that the PA paid $75 million per year to families of terrorists. However, the number may have risen sharply this past year, to $137.8 million, financing the “knife intifada” that terrorized Israelis. By transferring $221 million in its final hours, the Obama administration has ensured that the PA will be able to carry on business as usual without reducing its terror subsidies.

Palestinian leaders have tried to hide their support for terrorism by transferring the subsidies in 2014 from the PA, which receives international aid, to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which does not. This even managed to fool State Department official Anne Patterson, who said of the subsidies at the time, “I think they plan to phase it out.” However, Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party run both the PA and the PLO, and the subsidies have continued.

How can we be so easily fooled into funding terrorism? “Willful blindness helps,” writes David Feith in the Wall Street Journal. America continues to prop up Abbas’s government, even though he denies the Holocaust, incites terrorism, and his term in office technically ran out in January 2009.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Haneen Zoabi and 180 of the adoring faithful Israel Bashers in Richmond, UK by David Collier…..see note please

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

What makes this so appalling is that Haneen Zoabi, is an Israeli Arab politician, who currently serves as a member of the Knesset!!!! ….rsk
22 January 2017. I am at an event organised by the Richmond Palestine Solidarity Campaign. A big crowd, perhaps 180, have gathered to hear Israeli Arab member of the Knesset Haneen Zoabi speak. The room is full, but the demographic breakdown is simple. A large majority are white, British and over 55. It is the typical PSC crowd.

Haneen Zoabi had received a standing ovation at the PSC annual general meeting just two days before, she receives one here before she has even spoken. I am in the presence of PSC royalty.

The situation with the Arabs of Israel is complex. If Zoabi was here to fight for the Israeli Arab citizens, she would have my attention. If her aim was to improve the living standards, education and employment prospects of those who voted her into power, she would have my support. If the real goal was to reduce the inequality that minorities often experience, I’d wave a flag in her name. But Zoabi is not here to represent the needs of Israel’s minorities, she is here to perpetuate the external conflict.

When speaking of the democratic freedoms of a minority group Zoabi comments thus: “We want the opposite. Give us our land back. Give us our homeland back. Give us our people back. We don’t want to scream, we don’t need this freedom of expression”. This, as the entire Middle East burns in radical Islamic bush fires around her.
Racism, racism, everywhere

Not everyone in the room is a racist, not everyone an antisemite. But many are. Two PSC activists are speaking in the row behind me. One had been to Salisbury for an event with Ilan Pappe on 19th January. He had also been at the PSC AGM over the weekend. Busy guy.

He spoke of how ‘real Palestinians’ are needed to speak up against Balfour. Pappe he said “is not a real Palestinian”. What he meant of course, was that “Pappe is Jewish”. There is no other translation that works. This the evidence that anti-Zionism cuts too close to antisemitism to be ignored. Pappe is no Zionist. If Pappe was exactly Pappe, but with only the Jewish identity stripped away, he would be ‘a real Palestinian’ without question. Pappe’s offence here is simply his ‘Jewishness’.

For a PSC activist to suggest Pappe is not a ‘true Palestinian’, is like someone suggesting I am not ‘truly British’. No difference. None.

Two more standing next to me just before the event begins. Discussing PSC attempts to have Zoabi speak to British MP’s whilst she is here. Sir Alan Duncan’s name is mentioned, and from Duncan it was just a short trip to discussion over the Al Jazeera documentary and the ‘lobby’. In the heart of Richmond’s PSC base there is no need to even look over the shoulder as it is identified as the ‘Jewish lobby’.

Then there are the faces I recognise. Hard core antisemitic PSC groupies. Examples of the nature of ‘humanitarian concern’ that drive the Palestinian cause. In the image below are social media posts *only* from some of those who attended last night. Posts about Chabloz, Atzmon, Mein Kampf and Holocaust denial. When these are your points of reference for all things ‘Jewish’, all talk of it just being opposition to Zionism are washed away.