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Arabs Must Turn a New Page with Israel by Fred Maroun

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

We must look at Israel not as foreign presence, which it is not, but as a unique and remarkable component of the Middle East that enriches the region.

The creation of such a Palestinian state under today’s conditions is likely to result in a Hamas-dominated state that is violently hostile towards Israel. The Palestinian Authority must be transitioned into a peaceful and stable entity before it can be expected to run a state.

Binyamin Netanyahu recently suggested an approach to make the peace initiative work, but Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Arabi rejected it out of hand. This is not how harmonious relationships between nations are built.

“We must all rise above all forms of fanaticism, self-deception and obsolete theories of superiority.” — Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, addressing Israel’s parliament on November 20, 1977.

This is part two of a two-part series. The first part examined the mistakes that we Arabs made in our interactions with Israel.

There is much that we can do to improve our relationship with Israel — if we want to — and there is good reason to think that it would be in both our short- and long-term interest if we did. The most critical change is in approach. Changing that would start to repair the foundation of the relationship and would provide a basis for mutual respect and trust, without which any solution would remain fragile.
Understand Israel

We must see the real Israel rather than the monstrosity that Arabs have been brainwashed to see. We are so afraid to call Israel by its real name that we refer to it as the “Zionist entity”. The name is “Israel”; as written in Haaretz, “Israel has been the name of an ethnic group in the Levant going back at least 3200 years”.

The standard Arab narrative about Israel is that it is the result of Western colonialism. This language has also been adopted by many, who claim that “settler colonialism that began with the Nakba … in 1948”, implying that all of Israel is a colony. This claim is not true, and no healthy relationship can be built while one side keeps repeating lies about the other.

Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, a people with a long and complex history on that land. Attempts to kill them and exile them came from many sources over the centuries, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans and the Crusaders. These are historical facts.

Israel’s then Prime Minister Golda Meir said in 1973, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs — we have no place to go”. No matter how much pressure Arabs put on Jews to leave, they are not going anywhere; in fact, that pressure only hardens their resolve. Israel is their home.

We must look at Israel not as foreign presence, which it is not, but as a unique and remarkable component of the Middle East that enriches the region.
Not our enemy

We must stop calling Israel our enemy. We deliberately chose to make Israel our enemy when we attacked it, rather than accept the existence of a tiny Jewish state in our midst.

Israel (including the annexed Golan Heights and East Jerusalem) is only 19% of British Mandate Palestine (which included Jordan), on which Britain promised in 1924 to build a “Jewish National Home”. Israel is so small that it would have to be duplicated 595 times to cover the entire Arab world.

We made self-defeating decisions in our relationship with Israel, based on the belief that it is our enemy and that we can only deal with it though force — but the tiny state of Israel is not a threat to the Arab world.

Every year, Palestinians hold rallies, often violent ones, to commemorate the Nakba (“catastrophe”) , which is they give ton to the Arab loss in the war of 1948/49. They carry keys, symbolizing the keys to homes that their ancestors fled during that war. This commemoration, like much of the Arab rhetoric about Israel, is a one-sided view that demonizes Israel while it absolves Arabs of all responsibility for starting and continuing a conflict that resulted in decades of violence as well as displacements of both Arabs and Jews.

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Iran Is Cheating on the Nuclear Deal, Now What? by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

One year into the nuclear deal, two credible and timely intelligence reports reveal that Iran has no intention of honoring the terms of the deal, which, anyway, it never signed.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency revealed that the Iranian government has pursued a “clandestine” path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies “at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level.”

A secret agreement, obtained by the Associated Press, discloses that Iran’s nuclear deal would not only lift constraints on Iran’s nuclear program after the nuclear deal, but it will also do so long before the deal expires — including the installation of thousands of centrifuges, five times more than what it currently possesses, as well enriching uranium at a much higher pace.

The more the White House ignores Iran’s violations of the nuclear accord, the more Iran will be emboldened to violate international laws and the terms of the nuclear agreement.

On July 14, 2015, Iran and the six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) reached an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. The deal was intended to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and put a hold on Tehran’s nuclear development.

President Obama promised that the deal is not based on trust rather anchored in verification. Nevertheless, the following revelations of confidential documents as well as the following breaches of the nuclear agreement by Iran, reveal otherwise.

On paper, the nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stipulates a series of regulations, monitoring mechanisms, and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities. But how can the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) maintain these transparency standards and follow through on the proposed regulations? How can the IAEA be sure to detect all illicit nuclear activities in the 18th largest country in the world?

Iran has a history of deceiving the IAEA by conducting clandestine nuclear activities, as it did in Arak, Natanz, and Ferdow.

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Khizr Khan’s writings discovered subordinating US Constitution to sharia law By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

He was presented to the nation as a Constitution-loving (he carries a pocket copy, dontcha know!) immigrant who just happens to be from Pakistan, but it turns out that Khizr Khan is a recognized scholar on sharia law. And in his published writings, he seems to approve of subordinating the Constitution to Allah’s own sharia. Paul Sperry reports at Breitbart:

Khizr M. Khan has published papers supporting the supremacy of Islamic law over “man-made” Western law — including the very Constitution he championed in his Democratic National Convention speech attacking GOP presidential nod Donald Trump.

In 1983, for example, Khan wrote a glowing review of a book compiled from a seminar held in Kuwait called “Human Rights In Islam” in which he singles out for praise the keynote address of fellow Pakistani Allah K. Brohi, a pro-jihad Islamic jurist who was one of the closest advisers to late Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq, the father of the Taliban movement.

Khan speaks admiringly of Brohi’s interpretation of human rights, even though it included the right to kill and mutilate those who violate Islamic laws and even the right of men to “beat” wives who act “unseemly.”

Brohi has quite a few “accomplishments” for Khan to admire:

[Brohi] restored Sharia punishments, such as amputations for theft and demands that rape victims produce four male witnesses or face adultery charges. He also made insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad a crime punishable by death. To speed the Islamization of Pakistan, he and Zia issued a law that required judges to consult mullahs on every judicial decision for Sharia compliance.

And as for Khan’s wife, the silent Gold Star Mother:

Brohi goes on to argue that human rights bestowed by Islam include the right of men to “beat” their wives.

“The best statement of the human rights is also to be found in the address delivered by the prophet [Muhammad] so often described as his last address,” Brohi said, quoting: “ ‘You have rights over your wives and they have rights over you. You have the right that they should not defile your bed and that they should not behave with open unseemliness. If they do, God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to beat them but not with severity.’”

Khan touted the supremacy of sharia:

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Obama dances the jizya By Richard Butrick

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

When Jefferson and John Adams went to call on Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, they asked him by what right his Barbary pirates raided American ships, stole their cargo, killed, enslaved, and ransomed their crews. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress, the ambassador answered

that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

That was in the early 1800s. Seems little has changed regarding the mindset of the leaders of the Ummah. Now it turns out that Obama (Kerry?) clandestinely ransomed four American captives held by Iran.

The Obama administration secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran in January at the same time Tehran was releasing four jailed Americans, payment that a top congressional Republican is calling “ransom.” The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. and European officials and congressional sources, reported that the administration procured the money from central banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands. The money was stacked on wooden pallets and flown to Tehran in an unmarked cargo plane.

The Iranians know desperation when they see it and Obama was desperate for the appearance of success in the Middle East. Seems we have a president more concerned with his image than with the honor and reputation of the U.S. and its citizens. Compare this to Stephen Decatur, the hero of the Tripoli wars:

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Government Expansion in the West and Its Economic Consequences By Herbert London

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

It is clear based on this stage of political evolution in the West that democracy – to the extent it has meaning – is a form of inclusiveness, expanding the horizons of political participation. On one level it makes sense — why should anyone be denied participation when interests in the aggregate are why we employ the term “representative government”?

The issue as it has now developed is that extensive political involvement results in economic hazards. A government accountable to the electorate regulates to satisfy one constituency or another, borrows money for real and perceived needs, and debases the soundness of the currency for its own political advantage.

Extension of political involvement also means that a “servile” class of those who do not work, but must be supported, are part of the democratic mosaic. Recognizing the imperfections in a free market, compassion has become a moral anodyne. The moral life, in which virtue is a constraint on certain behavior, retreats before a relativism that abjures judgment. So far in the direction of relativism have we gone that it is freedom that must be defined, not slavery. Freedom once meant the capacity to choose along with facing the consequences of that choice. There are burdens attached to freedom. Now freedom is being able to do what one wants assuming the state accepts you as a member of the servile class.

There is a price to be paid for the condition. Every Western nation is in debt. The U.S. level is about to reach $20 trillion, with liabilities at least three times that sum. Deficits in fiscal budgets are the pattern, with the only question being the level of the deficit. The conditions are dicey but political inclusiveness militates against change. The politics of the era makes change a rhetorical claim, not a realistic policy option. Imagine the consequence of trying to reduce entitlement spending?

Senator Bernie Sanders campaigns on free tuition. The British take great pride in a single-payer health care system that has put great strain on national finances. Greece is effectively bankrupt because the state has assumed the role of parent and insurer. Even the once affluent Germany is facing financial hardship in its attempt to incorporate a million migrants into its governmental system.

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Peter Smith: Donald Trump’s Greatest Sin

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

“So he can’t win then? Well he can and likely will win because of his commonsense policies.Undoing the corrupt Washington machine, fortifying border and national security, generating jobs by renegotiating trade deals and by lowering taxes and regulations, increasing the size of the military and crushing ISIS – all appeal to a population which is discontent with the status quo and think times are tough and dangerous. Prediction: Enough of the ‘poorly educated’ will have enough commonsense to vote for the no-nonsense guy despite him often putting his foot in his mouth. And the educated elite will sulk and bleat in disbelief.”

No Republican is ever given an ounce of leeway by the liberal media. But Trump, in particular, conjures a perfect storm. He is loathed particularly and precisely because he appeals to those dismissed as ‘the poorly educated’, the very people the media mob disparage and despise.
He has a knack of continually snatching censure from the jaws of triumph by gauche remarks. Will Donald Trump win despite his susceptibility to Trump-baiting? Love conquers all, so they say. In this case, the key to Mr Trump’s success is his mutual love affair with the so-called poorly educated.

Hmm, the poorly educated? What a fatuous label. It suggests there is a relevant disparity between those without tertiary educations and those whose minds have been sharply honed by the towering intellects within academia. Always shaky, this pedestal has been completely levelled as the average intellectual acumen of academics has plummeted; that is, if their pitiful, politically-correct, mangled-English utterances are any guide.

In any event, commonsense was always far more important than education in arriving at sound decisions. Of course, commonsense and higher-education are not mutually exclusive. At the same time, campuses peddling safe spaces, victimhood and microaggressions can do no other than put commonsense at risk. Commonsense was recently on glorious display in the UK.

Once you take out the Scots and nationalists in Northern Ireland who had their own agendas, the self-serving financial set in London, and the young (under 25s) whose brains are still developing, the Brexit vote was much more decisive than the overall figures suggest. Despite getting riding instructions on what was good for them, a large proportion of the ‘poorly educated’ had the good sense to decide that they wanted to live in a country which has the right to determine who can enter and whose legal jurisdiction is not circumscribed by a foreign court.

Looked at another way, the vote for Brexit was a vote for putting the UK first. It resonates with Trump’s campaign. Trump is also relying on the commonsense of ordinary people. This will prove to be a sound strategy; though he has hurdles in his way.

Over ninety percent of African Americans will dutifully vote for the party which has made so many of them dependants. In the land of identity politics, assiduously nourished by the Democrats, a large majority of Hispanics will also vote for Hillary Clinton. To almost cap it all, the Democrats have a powerful electoral machine and an unscrupulous ground game. But to absolutely cap it all, Trump has to overcome Trump.

He refuses no opportunity to be asked questions by journalists; and, unlike politicians, he actually tries to answer them. Almost to a man and woman these journalists are university-educated rampant liberals. They probe waiting for his mistake and then inflate the misstep.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were hacked revealing a conspiracy against Bernie Sanders, replete with crass and tasteless accompanying language. DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to resign. A gift for Trump? Think again. For some reason it was speculated that the Russians may have done the hacking. In a to-and-fro press conference, Trump clearly tongue in cheek (I saw it) said he hoped Russia would “find” the 30,000 emails that Mrs Clinton deleted and let the press see them. The beat-up followed.

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Former White House Official: State Department’s Latest Assault on Israel Indicates Obama Administration Seeking Even Greater Distance From Jewish State

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

The State Department’s latest assault on Israel is further proof of the Obama administration’s deep conviction that “more distancing between itself and Jerusalem is a good thing for the United States,” a top adviser to former US President George W. Bush told The Algemeiner on Monday.

“Its obsession with housing construction by Israeli Jews is certainly not shared by any Arab government, but it is apparently held by everyone working in the Near East Bureau,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the New York- and Washington, DC-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Abrams, who served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the “Bush 43” administration, was referring back to his own counter-offensive against what he called the State Department’s “remarkable assault on Israel” last week, which, “both in tone and content, marks a new hostility – and plenty of sheer ignorance.”

In his blog “Pressure Points” on Thursday, Abrams blasted the American administration, after State Department spokesman John Kirby released a statement accusing the Israeli government of “systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution,” by engaging in “settlement activity, which is corrosive to the cause of peace.”

As far as the timing of the statement is concerned, coinciding as it did with the Democratic National Convention, Abrams said he doesn’t believe it is linked to the presidential race. “What’s in it for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Obama administration? For Hillary, nothing,” he said. “The Sanders people will presumably like the attack on Israel, but they will credit Obama for it and it won’t make them more likely to vote for her. For Obama, what is ever in it for him and his team, for bashing Israel? What do they ever gain from such actions? I don’t think they do it to help the Left in Israel, or for other narrowly political reasons. They do it out of conviction — the conviction that they have only a few more months to enlarge that famous ‘daylight’ between the US and Israel.”

Asked about the State Department’s having been so harsh on the eve of the visit of IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, and a few days later, Israeli National Security Council head Yaakov Nagel, to the United States – reportedly to discuss defense cooperation between the two countries and the new US aid package to Israel – Abrams said, “It is suspicious, but not conclusive.”

Abrams was not alone in his criticism of the State Department’s recent reprimand of Israel.

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Justice Department Officials Raised Objections on U.S. Cash Payment to Iran Some officials worried about message being sent but were overruledBy Devlin Barrett

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

WASHINGTON—Senior Justice Department officials objected to sending a plane loaded with cash to Tehran at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department, according to people familiar with the discussions.

After announcing the release of the Americans in January, President Barack Obama also said the U.S. would pay $1.7 billion to Iran to settle a failed arms deal dating back to 1979. What wasn’t disclosed then was that the first payment would be $400 million in cash, flown in at the same time, as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The timing and manner of the payment raised alarms at the Justice Department, according to those familiar with the discussions. “People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment,’’ said one of the people.

The disclosures reignited a political furor over the Iran deal in Washington that could complicate White House efforts to fortify it before Mr. Obama’s term ends.

Three top Republicans who have been feuding in recent weeks—presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sen. John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan—were united Wednesday in blasting the Obama administration.

Senior U.S. officials denied the payment was anything like a ransom. They disputed that there was any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange, saying there was no quid pro quo.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest accused Republicans of seizing upon the Journal report to revive their campaign against the landmark nuclear deal, which took effect the same weekend as the prisoner release.

The prisoner-swap negotiations were led by the State Department, with help from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The cash settlement talks were handled principally by State Department lawyers. All of that work was overseen, and ultimately approved, by the White House. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Mass Stabbing Strikes London as U.K. Steps Up Armed Police Force to Prepare for Possible Terror Attacks Threat level is currently at the second-highest ranking of ‘severe,’ indicating authorities believe an attack is highly likely By Alexis Flynn

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

LONDON—A woman was killed and as many as five others were wounded in a knife attack in central London late Wednesday, hours after more armed police officers were deployed on the city’s streets under measures to prepare the country for the types of attacks by Islamic extremists seen elsewhere in Europe.

London’s Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, said they arrested a suspect in connection with the attack in Russell Square.

The police didn’t rule out terrorism as a motive, according to a police statement early Thursday. No further information was immediately available.

Earlier on Wednesday, Scotland Yard said the deployment of the previously announced extra armed officers would include ensuring a visible presence in the city, including at well-known landmarks. In the U.K., more than 90% of police officers are unarmed, with only specialist firearms teams permitted to carry submachine guns and pistols capable of killing a hostile suspect.

Extremists have launched attacks recently in France, Belgium and Germany, and their methods have included multiple shooters and lone assailants using weapons including guns and heavy vehicles. That has left authorities across Europe scrambling to adapt.

In January, following the massacre in Paris late last year, U.K. authorities said they would add 600 officers trained to handle weapons to the 2,200 already in London. Those are the officers who are now ready to be deployed. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Defender of the Constitution Thomas McKean was one of only two signers of the Declaration of Independence to serve on active duty in the Continental Army. By Robert K. Landers

Posted By on August 4th, 2016

Passions ran high in Philadelphia after the British departed in June 1778, ending their months-long occupation. Bands of patriots tarred-and-feathered Tories who refused to sign “loyalty oaths.” A few months later, two elderly Quakers accused of treason were tried before Pennsylvania Chief Justice Thomas McKean. Though neither had taken up arms against the rebels, one was said to have encouraged giving the British information on rebel plans and helped guard city gates during the occupation. The other admitted that he had encouraged support for the crown, though he had also helped families of American prisoners gain access to them.

Their respective juries found both defendants guilty, and McKean sentenced the old men to death by hanging. Dozens of petitions for clemency were sent to Pennsylvania’s executive council, and just days before their scheduled executions McKean sought pardons for both. “It was vintage McKean,” says biographer David McKean in “Suspected of Independence.” Strongly committed to the rule of law “as the most effective check on ever-changing popular attitudes,” McKean believed that its application “needed to be guided by compassion.” In this case, the pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears.

Though the two Quakers were the only defendants in his court ever to be convicted of treason and put to death, McKean acquired a reputation, endorsed by some historians, as a “hanging judge.” David McKean (a direct descendant of his subject) says that the chief justice generally “showed leniency to the Loyalists after the British vacated Philadelphia.” Even before the British arrived, he set free 29 Quakers who had been detained as suspected Tory sympathizers.

McKean served 22 years as Pennsylvania’s chief justice, and in the republic’s early years, says the author, his court may have been “more powerful” than the nascent U.S. Supreme Court. Some years later, a multi-volume work about the body of law that McKean developed became “a touchstone for courts throughout the country,” including the Supreme Court. “Perhaps no one other than Chief Justice John Marshall did more than McKean to establish an independent judiciary,” Mr. McKean asserts.

The author of three previous books on American political history, David McKean was an official at the State Department until earlier this year, when he was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. “I never really gave my ancestor a lot of thought,” he writes, until he began to notice fleeting references to him in histories of the period. Unfortunately, Thomas McKean did not keep a diary and was not a prolific letter writer, so events generally loom larger than his intimate perception of them in this brisk biography. CONTINUE AT SITE