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December 2016

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T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS BY RUTH KING

By on December 24th, 2016

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL

T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE NATION

REPUBLICANS REVELED IN GREAT JUBILATION.

THE DEMS WHINED AND TOSSED IN THEIR COLLECTIVE BEDS

WHILE DREAMS OF HACKING AND RECOUNTS DANCED IN THEIR HEADS.

IN CHAPPAQUA, A WOMAN OF NO MORALS OR GRACE

STILL RAGED AT LOSING THE ELECTORAL RACE.

IN WASHINGTON, THEY AWOKE TO A TERRIBLE CLATTER

AND RUSHED TO THE WINDOWS TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER.

PUMPS, BACKHOES AND TRACTORS WERE ON A STOMP

WELL WHAT DO YOU KNOW, THEY WERE DRAINING THE SWAMP.

AND OUT ON THE LAWN IN A SLEIGH ON THE GRASSES

THERE APPEARED DONALD WITH EIGHT GLOOMY JACKASSES.

AND HE WHISTLED AND SHOUTED AND TWEETED SO MERRY

“NOW SCHUMER, LYNCH, PODESTA, BIDEN, AND KERRY,

NOW JARRETT, AND BRENNAN AND REID THE CLOWN:

IT’S DAWN IN AMERICA THERE’S A NEW MAN IN TOWN!”

HE ROLLED OUT HIS LIST AND CHECKED IT TWICE

IN THE MEDIA, HE KNEW WHO WAS NAUGHTY OR NICE.

“TO BECKEL AND BLITZER, GEORGE WILL AND LESTER HOLT

AND MEGYN AND RADDATZ AND MATTHEWS THE DOLT.

TO KRISTOFF, CNN, AND THE HAGS ON THE VIEW,

KRISTOL, AND NEVER TRUMPERS I BID YOU ADIEU.”

AND THEN OFF HE RODE IN A BURST OF HASTE

AND I HEARD HIM SAY ‘THERE’S NO TIME TO WASTE.”

PYONYANG, RUSSIA, THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE CHINESE

IMMIGRATION, RUSSIA, EUROPE AND A CARBON FREEZE.

GENERAL CABINET BUILDING AND ISLAMIC TERROR

IT’S TOUGH TO GOVERN WITHOUT MAKING AN ERROR.

BUT IN TAIWAN FOR ONCE THE FUTURE WAS BRIGHT

IN JERUSALEM, THEY LIT THE FIRST CHANUKAH LIGHT

SO, TO BED I GO WITH GREAT HOPE AND CHEER

HAPPY CHANUKAH, MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

BY RUTH KING

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: WHERE THE BLAME LIES

By on December 24th, 2016

The latest outrage at the United in Hate for Israel Nations is the culmination of decades of Israel bashing in that corrupt and corrupting institution. The abstention of the United States should come as no surprise under the Obama administration which has exhibited overt antipathy to Israel since January 2009.
The irony is that among those who are wringing hands are those who are most directly responsible for the travesty itself. The two-state groupies who argued for more Israeli appeasement despite incontrovertible evidence that each territorial concession was followed by escalated terrorism are the culprits. They ignored and air-brushed the rain of rockets from Gaza after Israel surrendered the area. They ignored and air brushed the unprecedented reign of terror in Israel cities that followed the Oslo and Wye Plantation concessions. They ignored and air brushed the desecration of Jewish shrines and synagogues in every town in the West Bank that was deeded to Palestinian Arab control. They ignored and air-brushed the jihadist rants and celebration of murderers that were promoted by Abbas while they criticized Israel and turned blind eyes and deaf ears to the hypocrisy and overt anti-Semitism behind all the boycott and divest movements.
Did those useless idiots not see where all this was headed?
So now they are outraged…rather mildly …over what is the natural outcome of policies that strip Israel of legitimate historic and strategic rights to buttress a chimeric vision of peace. They and the Israeli left should spare us their caterwauling and hang their heads in shame. rsk

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Diplomatic terrorism at the UN, courtesy President Obama by Anne Bayefsky

By on December 24th, 2016

The vicious condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council on December 23, 2016 is a watershed moment in U.S.-UN relations – albeit not as President Obama hoped. Following the vote of fourteen in favor and one American abstention, Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour and American Ambassador Samantha Power exchanged a telling handshake. Evidently, President Obama believes that he has put one over on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But here’s another possibility: treachery at the UN will not be cost free.

Let’s be absolutely clear about what has just happened. The Palestinians have completed the hijacking of every major UN institution. The 2016 General Assembly has adopted nineteen resolutions condemning Israel and nine critical of all other UN states combined. The 2016 Commission on the Status of Women adopted one resolution condemning Israel and zero on any other state. The 2016 UN Human Rights Council celebrated ten years of adopting more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than any other place on earth. And now – to the applause of the assembled – the Palestinians can add the UN Security Council to their list.

Resolution sponsors Malaysia and New Zealand explained UN-think to the Council this way: Israeli settlements are “the single biggest threat to peace” and the “primary threat to the viability of the two-state solution.” Not seven decades of unremitting Arab terror and violent rejection of Jewish self-determination in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

This is not just any lie. This is the big lie of modern antisemitism. This is the lie that drove a Palestinian teenager in June of this year to creep into the home of 13-year old Hallel Ariel and butcher her with a knife in the back as she slept in her bed.

The bed was located in the “settlement” of Kiryat Arba – on Arab-claimed territory whose ownership – by agreement – is subject to final status negotiations instead of back-stabbing UN resolutions. So to skip the UN-eze, today’s hate fest was diplomatic terrorism.

Obama’s failure to veto the resolution is at odds with long-standing American foreign policy that has insisted on peace through negotiations, and not UN-fiat, as the only way to ensure genuine and long-lasting recognition and cooperation. His excuse for throwing bipartisan wisdom overboard was delivered by Ambassador Power, in one of the most disingenuous statements in the history of American diplomacy.

Power began by likening Obama’s deed to Ronald Reagan’s treatment of Israel. She repeatedly claimed that the move was nothing new and “in line” with the past, though “historic” is how speaker-after-speaker and the President of the Council himself described it. She noted “Israel has been treated differently than other nations at the United Nations” and then doubled-down on more of the same. She complained that Council “members suddenly summon the will to act” when it comes to Israel, after the White House had actively pushed the frantic adoption of the resolution with less than 48 hours’ notice.

At its core, this UN move is a head-on assault on American democracy. President Obama knew full well he did not have Congressional support for the Iran deal, so he went straight to the Security Council first. Likewise, he knew that there would have been overwhelming Congressional opposition to this resolution, so he carefully planned his stealth attack.

He waited until Congress was not in session. Members of his administration made periodic suggestions that nothing had been decided. There were occasional head fakes that he was “leaning” against it. He produced smiling photo-ops from a Hawaiian golf course with no obvious major foreign policy moves minutes away. Holiday time-outs were in full-swing across the country. And then he pounced, giving Israel virtually no notice of his intent not to veto.

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Obama’s Betrayal of Israel Is a Black Day for American Diplomacy It is Islamist-leftist dogma that Israel’s millennia of attachment to its homeland count for nothing. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on December 24th, 2016

Adding a final shameful chapter to a foreign-policy record that already runneth over with them, Barack Obama on Friday abandoned America’s commitment to Israel’s security, and to the vindication of democracy over sharia-supremacist aggression. In an act of cowardly venom, the president had the United States abstain from — and thereby effectively enact — a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemns Israeli settlement activity.

At least, that’s what the resolution ostensibly does. The reality is much more than that. The resolution undertakes to render our ally indefensible.

It was a black day in modern American diplomatic history, a flurry of sinister wheeling and dealing while the nation — exhausted by the election, anticipating a weekend of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration — was looking the other way.

To his great credit, Donald Trump was not. The president-elect asserted himself on Israel’s behalf, backing up his campaign promise that “America First” meant restoration of America’s reputation as a dependable friend and an enemy not to be trifled with. Under the pressure he generated, Egypt backed down, withdrawing its sponsorship of the resolution.

But such is the disdain in which Israel is openly held after eight Obama years of empowering Islamists that four other countries — Malaysia, Venezuela, Senegal, and, of all places, New Zealand — revived the resolution, knowing they had the State Department’s backing. With the U.S. abstention, it was easily approved.

It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade, Rashid Khalidi — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote. At the root of the settlements controversy is the fiction that the territory at issue is “occupied Palestinian” land. In point of stubborn fact, no matter how tirelessly the vaunted “international community” evokes the scurrilous image of occupation, the territory is righteously disputed.

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BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Black Slaveowners- A Review By Janet Levy

By on December 24th, 2016

It is widely believed that slavery in 19th-century America was the exclusive province of whites. However, as historian Larry Kroger reveals inBlack Slaveowners, free black people in the United States owned slaves, fought for their right to do so and had little sympathy for abolition.

A five-year investigation of federal census data, wills, mortgages, bills of sale, tax returns and newspaper ads from 1790 to 1860 provided the foundation for Koger’s examination of black slave masters in the Palmetto state, culminating in his illuminating book, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave

It is widely believed that slavery in 19th-century America was the exclusive province of whites. However, as historian Larry Kroger reveals inBlack Slaveowners, free black people in the United States owned slaves, fought for their right to do so and had little sympathy for abolition.
A five-year investigation of federal census data, wills, mortgages, bills of sale, tax returns and

Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860(McFarland, 1985). Charleston City, in which 72.1% of African-America households owned slaves, was a valuable primary documentation source. Records that survived the Civil War indicated the existence of 260 black slave masters.

This well-sourced book, which contains lengthy appendices of federal census data and well over 600 citations, represents an earnest attempt to examine a difficult and complex topic that too few have addressed: the phenomenon of black slaveowners.

According to Kroger’s comprehensive and well-researched volume, black slave owners lived in every Southern state that allowed slavery and even Northern states, including Maryland. The practice of black slave ownership was widespread and stretched from New York to Florida to Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. According to the 1830 federal census, free blacks owned 10,000 slaves, including in New York City eight free blacks who reportedly owned 17 slaves. Many black slave owners were large planters who raised cotton, rice, and sugar cane. Many inherited slaves from relatives or white kinsfolk who transported them from Africa to the New World.

As the economy of Charleston City expanded in the early 19th century, many free blacks were able to buy slaves, making the city the center of black slave holding in South Carolina. Between 1820 and 1840, most free black heads of households in Charleston owned slaves. Freed slaves in business customarily used slave labor, hired slaves out for a fee to non-slave owners or used slaves as collateral to secure loans. Former slaves bought slaves for economic benefit in a society in which slavery was an acceptable form of labor. They had no qualms about using slaves and were well assimilated into the white slaveowner culture. Often, free blacks purchased enslaved kinfolk to buy their freedom.

It was common in 19th-century South Carolina for the mulatto offspring of a white slave owner to be manumitted, educated, and made beneficiaries in a father-child relationship with the master. They were perceived as the legitimate heirs of the slave owner and thought of themselves as slave masters who legitimately used the labor of their father’s slaves. Kroger explains how divisions in the black community were delineated by skin tone, with lighter-skinned blacks enjoying higher socioeconomic status. He cites documented evidence from the state census of 1850 that indicated that 93.1 % of Negro slave owners were mulattos and 90% of their slaves were dark-skinned blacks.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Backlash Swells in Germany as Hunt for Terrorist Ends Tunisian migrant Anis Amri is killed in shootout near Milan; Angela Merkel faces mounting pressure over migrants By Anton Troianovski in Berlin and Eric Sylvers in Milan

By on December 24th, 2016

The hunt for the suspect in the deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market ended before dawn Friday in a shootout with Italian police near Milan, but the political fallout was just beginning to gather force.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian, lived in Germany for more than a year, despite having been previously jailed in Italy and denied asylum in both nations. Even as Europe’s most-wanted man, he traveled hundreds of miles this week, crossing at least two European Union borders on his way to Italy, where police stopped him to check his identity.

Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to mounting pressure Friday over her approach to migrants and national security as she readies for a re-election battle next year.

“The Amri case raises a series of questions, not just about the deed itself but also about the time since he came to Germany,” she said. “We will now examine with urgency to what degree state practices must be changed.”

Police in multiple countries were working Friday to figure out how Amri, who authorities said had train tickets from France, made his escape and whether he had help.

“I am very relieved that there is no more danger stemming from this perpetrator,” German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said, but he added that authorities would continue hunting for any accomplices. As of late Friday, police hadn’t disclosed any additional arrests.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The terror group’s official Amaq news agency posted a video of a man it said was Amri urging followers to kill “crusaders.” The man strongly resembled photos of Amri released by German police.

On Friday U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted: “Such hatred! When will the U.S., and all countries, fight back?”

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Obama Breaks With Decades of U.S. Policy to Declare Western Wall ‘Occupied Territory’ at the UN The lame-duck president is dismantling the alliance system that has kept America and much of the rest of the world secure By Lee Smith

By on December 24th, 2016

This afternoon several non-permanent members of the UN Security Council will submit a resolution that declares all settlements illegal under international law and demands that the country cease construction in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and other territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war. There is nothing new about such wildly unbalanced resolutions at the UN, of course—except this time, the Obama Administration will reportedly refrain from using the U.S. veto and will rather abstain from the vote, breaking with decades of American statesmanship that has protected its strategic Middle East ally from the legal consequences of UN rhetoric.

The resolution was authored by Egypt, which shelved the draft after the Netanyahu government reached out to the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump, which then pressured Cairo to drop the resolution. Venezuela, Malaysia, Senegal, and New Zealand say that if Egypt doesn’t push forward, they will. The resolution will permanently enshrine as a matter of international law that the Western Wall is “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that Jews building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. One prominent member of the pro-Israel community in Washington called the resolution “a nuclear bomb.”

The Obama Administration is already briefing friendly press organizations that they’re showing no animus toward the Jewish state in refusing to veto the resolution. Rather, it’s “tough love”: for an Israel that seems not to have the will or vision to take chances for peace.

That’s not how Israel sees it. As a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem told Tablet: “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”

In a sense, the UN vote is a perfect bookend to Obama’s Presidency. A man who came to office promising to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel, has done exactly that by breaking with decades of American policy. It is also seeking—contrary to established tradition and practice, which strictly prohibit such lame-duck actions—to tie the hands of the next White House, which has already made its pro-Israel posture clear.

No doubt that many of those critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship will defend and applaud the administration’s action, even as the effects of the resolution are obscene. So what if it enshrines in international law the fact that Jews can’t build homes or have sovereign access to their holy sites in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for more than 3000 years? Israel, as Kerry said, is too prosperous to care about peace with the Palestinians. Maybe some hardship will shake some sense into the Jewish State—which after all, could easily have made a just and secure peace with the Palestinian leadership at any time over the past two decades, if that’s what it wanted to do. Accounts to the contrary, from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, say, or left-wing Israeli politicians like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the late Shimon Peres, are simply propaganda generated by the pro-Israel Lobby, whose wings the President has thankfully clipped.

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Obama’s Disgraceful and Harmful Legacy on Israel Friday’s United Nations resolution is the administration’s final swipe at the Jewish state. Elliott Abrams

By on December 24th, 2016

For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship. Obama’s defenders repeatedly used the trope that “Israel should not be a partisan issue,” as if Obama’s views and actions were beyond reproach. A whole corps of Jewish leaders, some at the major organizations and many from Chicago, showed far greater loyalty to Obama than to the tradition of true nonpartisanship when it came to Middle East policy.

All of those arguments have been ground into dust by Obama’s action Friday allowing a nasty and harmful anti-Israel resolution to pass the United Nations Security Council. Just weeks before leaving office, he could not resist the opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel—and to do real harm. So he will leave with his record on Israel in ruins, and he will leave Democrats even worse off.

It’s pretty clear that he does not care. Obama has gotten himself elected twice, the second time by a decreased margin (the only time a president has been reelected by fewer votes than in his first term), but he has laid waste to his party. In the House, the Senate, the state governorships, and the state legislatures, the Democrats have suffered loss after loss. Today’s anti-Israel action will further damage the Democratic party, by driving some Jews if not toward the Republicans then at least away from the Democrats and toward neutrality. Donald Trump’s clear statement on Thursday that he favored a veto, Netanyahu’s fervent pleas for one, and the Egyptian action in postponing the vote show where Obama stood: not with Israel, not even with Egypt, but with the Palestinians. Pleas for a veto from Democrats in Congress were ignored by the White House.

Does the resolution matter? It does. The text declares that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” This may turn both settlers—even those in major blocs like Maale Adumim, that everyone knows Israel will keep in any peace deal—and Israeli officials into criminals in some countries, subject to prosecution there or in the International Criminal Court. The text demands “that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” Now add this wording to the previous line and it means that even construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City is “a flagrant violation under international law.” The resolution also “calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” This is a call to boycott products of the Golan, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

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Palestinians: The Nightmare of Christians by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on December 24th, 2016

For the past four decades, Samir Qumsieh, who hails from a large and well-respected Christian family in the town of Bet Sahour, near Bethlehem, has fought for the rights of the region’s miniscule Palestinian Christian minority. He has even dared to speak out against the subjugation of Christians living under the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

He regularly receives death threats, and he has been the target of a petrol bomb attack.

“The solution to extremism starts with the kindergarten, with elementary school. It begins with the churches, with the mosques and the school curricula. Curricula are very important – Jewish, Christian and Muslim ones. They should concentrate on accepting the ‘other.’ If this idea is adopted, the future generation will be liberal and open-minded.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“Every day we hear and see some radical Muslim clerics speaking strongly against Christians. Just recently, one of the sheiks was saying that Christian Copts should be slaughtered like sheep. Where is the Egyptian security? If I were in charge of Egyptian security, I would have this sheikh arrested immediately, and have him rot in a dark underground cell.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“To understand the severity of the situation is, let us recall that in the 1950s about 86% of the population of the Bethlehem area was Christian. Today, we are only 12%. In Israel, by contrast, we have 133,000 Christians and the figure is stable. Of course, I am worried about the future of Christians here.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“I fear the day will come when our churches will become museums. is my nightmare.” — Samir Qumsieh.

Without question, Samir Qumsieh is one of the most courageous Christian leaders in the Middle East. Qumsieh is one of the few willing to risk his life to speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories and the Middle East, generally.

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Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum The U.N. resolution is a defining act of Obama’s Presidency.

By on December 24th, 2016

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.

Earlier in the week, Egypt withdrew the Security Council resolution under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President-elect Donald Trump also intervened, speaking with Egypt’s government and, via Twitter, urging Mr. Obama to block the resolution, as have past U.S. Administrations and Mr. Obama himself in 2011.

As was widely reported Friday after the U.N. vote, the White House decided to abstain—thereby allowing the pro-Palestinian resolution to pass—in retaliation against the intervention by Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump.

Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known. Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.

It is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done.

No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.

Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

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