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February 2020

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The Two-step Solution to The Palestinian Problem By Ted Belman

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/the_twostep_solution_to_the_palestinian_problem_.html

Last week, the Trump team tabled  “Peace to Prosperity” otherwise known as The Deal of the Century, in which they set out their vision for achieving peace. It includes the creation of a Palestinian “state.”  The Palestinian leadership was quick to reject it as did the Arab League and many others, including many Israelis.

Nobody believes the “state” will come to be.

Surely the Trump team knows this. So, why did they table the vision?

In my opinion, the Trump team wanted to present a new vision to replace the old vision. During the next four years they will advance their vision and negate the old vision.

The old vision was based on the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 and 1995, and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which demanded 100% withdrawal by Israel.  In addition, it demanded the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and the division of Jerusalem. 

This vision was premised on the Palestinian narrative that presented the Palestinians as indigenous and the Israelis as interlopers, oppressors and occupiers.

According to Peace to Prosperity,

“The Oslo Accords, however, left numerous key issues unresolved pending the completion of permanent status negotiations, including, among other items, borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem. Those agreements did not create an effective path for neutralizing the kinds of crises that emerged during the implementation of Oslo, including waves of terror and violence.”

The Accords became a permanent constitution articulating the division of powers between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) over Parts A, B and C as delineated by the Accords.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Attorney General Bill Barr rebukes Trump’s tweets about Roger Stone By Andrea Widburg

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/attorney_general_bill_barr_rebukes_trumps_tweets_about_roger_stone.html

Trump’s spokesman responds by saying that Trump has the same right as any other citizen to comment on a miscarriage of justice.

It’s hard to tell whether the apparent tension between President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr is real or is a way to create the appearance of some separation between Barr and Trump on the subject of Roger Stone. The facts are straightforward, but still open to interpretation.

Bob Mueller and his bad boys went after Roger Stone with a level of ferocity far in excess of any wrongdoing Stone had allegedly committed. Although Stone is a non-violent, first-time offender who allegedly committed a crime that is the norm in Washington D.C. (lying to Congress, something that James Clapper, for example, did with impunity), Mueller’s team arranged for a pre-dawn SWAT style raid on Stone to arrest him, complete with a conveniently present CNN team; a multi-pronged indictment; a jury foreman who openly despised Trump and everyone around him; and a shopped judge who loathes Trump too.

At the end of the day, Mueller’s prosecutors got Stone convicted on seven counts, including lying to Congress, obstructing an official proceeding, and witness tampering (that is, threats to a potential witness who found Stone’s angry fulminations laughable). Then, the Mueller gang went in for the kill, demanding that Mueller, who is now 67, be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. This excessive demand can only stem from malevolence and the need to send a warning to Trump associates, akin to the mafia promising a few broken kneecaps for people who don’t play along.

Immediately after the prosecutors made their sentencing demand, Trump tweeted out that the sentencing request was corrupt and evil, as well as taking swipes at the judge and the prosecutors:

At roughly the same time, the Justice Department intervened to ask the court not to consider the specific request for seven to ten years. Instead, it gave the judge more leeway by recommending only an unspecified term as the judge saw fit. Democrats predictably exploded, accusing Trump of interfering with justice.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The United Nations Once Again Proves Its Anti-Semitism By David Harsanyi

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/the-united-nations-once-again-proves-its-anti-semitism/

The U.N. Human Rights Council disproportionately focuses on Israel.

The depraved totalitarians, nefarious barbarians, two-bit gangsters, odious scoundrels, and bigoted scum who run the United Nations recently set up a new “database” to help anti-Semites around the world target Jewish businesses in the disputed territories of Judaea and Samaria — businesses that offer economic opportunities for Palestinians that pay higher than most other jobs in the West Bank.

In no other international dispute — and there are hundreds of them — does the United Nations target peaceful civilians or institutions. Certainly in no place do they work to destroy the businesses of noncombatants based on their ethnicity or religion. The 112 companies on the U.N.’s list are run and staffed, no doubt, by people with diverse viewpoints, at least some of whom likely support the creation of a Palestinian state. All of them create jobs, products, and services that foster cooperation.

None of this matters to the U.N. The “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” (BDS) campaign, now supported by the U.N., is a coordinated international effort committed to the elimination of the Jewish state, bringing together dictators, theocrats, terrorist organizations, Communists, the “international community,” and at least one of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s top surrogates. The movement targets Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism, which remains the predominant justification for violence, murder, and hatred against Jews in Europe and the Middle East.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

ATTACKS ON TRUMP SUPPORTERS…..APPALLING

By on February 14th, 2020

Florida Man Attacks Trump Supporters With … a Cane Sword
By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/florida-man-attacks-trump-supporters-with-a-cane-sword/

Peaceful Florida citizens holding Trump signs were minding their own business in Dunnellon, Fla., last Thursday when a man rushed at them with a cane sword.

Police arrested 49-year-old James L. Whitehurst II and charged him with 10 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of disorderly conduct, the Ocala Star Banner reported.

Victims reportedly told police that Whitehurst had approached them during their peaceful assembly with what was described as a cane sword. The assailant allegedly pointed the sword in their faces and made threatening statements, holding the blade 6 inches from their faces.

Whitehurst confessed to having removed the sword from its holder and pointing it at the Trump supporters. He told police he meant no harm by the threatening action.

New Hampshire Man Assaults Pro-Trump Teenager at Polling Site, Leaving Him ‘Traumatized’
By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-hampshire-man-assaults-pro-trump-teenager-at-polling-site-leaving-him-traumatized/

A New Hampshire man was arrested Thursday afternoon “after allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old Trump supporter and two adults at a polling site during the state’s first-in-the-nation primary earlier this week,” Fox News exclusively reports. The teen’s mother told Fox News that the assault left her son “traumatized.”

Patrick Bradley, 34, of Windham, N.H., was charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct.

Bradley reportedly got in the face of the teenage boy who was wearing a red MAGA hat and volunteering at the local high school, which was a polling place for the New Hampshire primary.

The boy’s mother described the incident involving her son in an interview with Fox News. “My son stayed home from school on Tuesday for a doctor’s appointment and we drove by the high school to go vote. When we got there, we saw Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, and my son was over the moon,” she said. “My son is the most patriotic kid you’d ever meet in your life.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Bears for Palestine’ Celebrates Terrorists at UC Berkeley By P. David Hornik

By on February 14th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bears-for-palestine-celebrates-terrorists-at-uc-berkeley/

Algemeiner, a website for Jewish and Israel news, reports that a group at the University of California, Berkeley, called Bears for Palestine, “us[ed] its dedicated cubicle space to display photos” of Palestinian terrorists—namely Fatima Bernawi, Rasmea Odeh, and Leila Khaled, “the latter seen wielding an AK-47 assault rifle.”

Bernawi was reportedly “the first Palestinian woman to organize an attack in Israel, placing a bomb [which didn’t explode] in a Jerusalem cinema in 1967. Rasmea Odeh was involved in a 1969 terror bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two Israeli students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe. Sentenced in Israel to life in prison, she was freed in a prisoner exchange; in 2017 she was deported from the U.S. to Jordan for lying on immigration forms.

As for Leila Khaled—who, like Rasmea Odeh, is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated by the U.S. as a terror organization and responsible for multiple suicide bombings—she was involved in the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1969 and an (Israeli) El Al plane in 1970 and is considered a Palestinian icon.

Back at UC Berkeley, on February 3, the student senate met to vote on a bill to condemn Bears for Palestine for the pro-terror display. “More than 200 people showed up…with many Jewish and Zionist students coming out to back the resolution, while Bears for Palestine members and supporters gathered to oppose it.”

Two hours later, “Jewish students collectively left the meeting” after deciding “that enough was enough and that [they] were not going to sit idly by as [their] members were threatened and harassed.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Comedy on the Campaign Trail By Jack Dunphy

By on February 14th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/comedy-on-the-campaign-trail/

As a spectator sport, politics has rarely been more entertaining. Put aside for the moment the stakes involved, with partisans on both sides claiming that the upcoming election is “the most important in history,” (as was the last one, and the one before that, but this time they really mean it), and take the time to enjoy the pure comedy of it all.

We were told by our educated betters in the media that with the installation of Donald Trump as president the country and the world would face certain decline, with unchecked chaos at home and even worse disorder abroad. Now, three years in, one casts an eye for evidence of such turmoil and finds little. Now those same educated betters inform us that their dire predictions did not come to pass because Mr. Trump has kept his totalitarian impulses largely in check under the burden of a reelection campaign and that if we are so foolish as to return him to office in November those impulses will be unleashed to the peril of civilization.

But consider: our friends on the left, having nominated a losing candidate in 2016, have had these intervening years to find a better one … and this is the group they have thus far settled on: an ancient socialist who has already suffered one heart attack, a youthful mayor of a small Midwestern city, a senator and former law professor who owes her early advancement in academia to a false claim of Native American heritage, a heretofore little-known Midwestern senator, and a doddering former vice president who failed spectacularly in two previous presidential campaigns. How can you not laugh?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Boris Takes Charge The British PM sacks his Chancellor. It’s his economy now.

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boris-takes-charge-11581621621?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Boris Johnson doesn’t do things by halves, and his reshuffle of the U.K. cabinet on Thursday is a case in point. Having exiled Chancellor Sajid Javid, the Prime Minister now is solely responsible to voters for Britain’s economic performance after Brexit.

Mr. Javid jumped instead of being pushed, but Mr. Johnson won’t be unhappy. The two increasingly butted heads on economic and fiscal policy, and Mr. Javid also disagreed on many matters with Mr. Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings. The breaking point came Thursday when Mr. Johnson insisted that Mr. Javid fire most of his policy advisers and hand the economic reins to Mr. Johnson’s office. Mr. Javid couldn’t stay on as a matter of reputation and self-respect.

The new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has been a member of Parliament for fewer than five years and is a relative unknown on the public stage. This means Mr. Johnson is now effectively responsible for economic policy. It’s just as well. An oddity of British governance is the traditional division of responsibility between the prime minister and the chancellor, with chancellors wielding outsize power to chart their own course independent of their nominal political boss. Now voters will know exactly whom to credit or blame.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Dangerous Denial of Sex Transgender ideology harms women, gays—and especially feminine boys and masculine girls. By Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Transgender ideology can take on a comical character, as in a recent American Civil Liberties Union commentary objecting to sales tax on tampons and similar products while pondering: “How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t?”

Yet it’s one thing to claim that a man can “identify” as a woman or vice versa. Increasingly we see a dangerous and antiscientific trend toward the outright denial of biological sex.

“The idea of two sexes is simplistic,” an article in the scientific journal Nature declared in 2015. “Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” A 2018 Scientific American piece asserted that “biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male.” And an October 2018 New York Times headline promised to explain “Why Sex Is Not Binary.”

The argument is that because some people are intersex—they have developmental conditions resulting in ambiguous sex characteristics—the categories male and female exist on a “spectrum,” and are therefore no more than “social constructs.” If male and female are merely arbitrary groupings, it follows that everyone, regardless of genetics or anatomy should be free to choose to identify as male or female, or to reject sex entirely in favor of a new bespoke “gender identity.”

To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS; “YOU’RE A RACIST!”

By on February 14th, 2020

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“You’re a racist!” The words stung. At first, I was upset and mystified. The word racist is defined by Webster as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human behavior and the racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” I could not understand the vitriol that prompted the accusation. I do not (and did not) believe I am racist, nor do I think I am misogynistic, anti-Semitic or xenophobic. While this incident occurred three years ago, I had not belittled Blacks by urging them to be dependent on an all-caring government. I have never implied they could not make it on their own; in fact, I have suggested they could and would – that aspiration was half the battle. I have never denied Asian-Americans admission to America’s most prestigious universities, simply because they were Asians, nor have I ever supported Boycott and Divest Sanctions (BADS) against Israel, just because the Jewish people wish to defend a homeland that dates back 2000 years And I never persuaded a young intern to perform oral sex in my office.

 

I am certainly no paragon of virtue. But all I had done was to write words in support of Mr. Trump’s attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” a quagmire of corrupt politicians, crony capitalists and bureaucratic administrators who feed off the public teat. I had had the temerity to defy teachers’ unions, when writing in support of school choice for inner-city children. I had provoked the anger of the “woke” by supporting the “stop, question and frisk” policy in cities where crime is a constant menace for minorities.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The real source of Abbas’s ‘Swiss cheese’ revulsion Former prime minister Ehud Olmert praised the very Palestinian leader who had snubbed his own generous-to-the-point-of-suicidal offer. By Ruthie Blum

By on February 14th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-The-real-source-of-Abbass-Swiss-cheese-revulsion-617528

At a session of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held up the map of US President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan and referred to the proposed borders of the state he has spent his career pretending to seek as “Swiss cheese.”

Abbas was altogether out of sorts that day, since he was forced to withdraw a resolution, introduced by Indonesia and Tunisia, to reject the “Deal of the Century” unveiled at the White House exactly two weeks earlier. Unfortunately for PA chief, who had grown accustomed to an American administration that bought his lies about Israel being to blame for his people’s plight, Team Trump entered the picture three years ago with an entirely different outlook.Suddenly, Abbas’s usual tricks were met with scorn from Washington. Even the new State Department was not engaging in diplomacy at all costs with the aging terror-master-in-a-tie. And when he made a public point of refusing to meet with Trump staffers, their response was not to coax and kowtow, but to shrug at his petulance and get on with the business of bolstering relations with Israel.

Yet despite the rebuffs – and proud “pay for slay” policy – Trump and his advisers were working arduously to craft a blueprint for a viable Palestinian state. That Abbas rejected the plan before having a clue what it contained was to be expected, which is why few people in Israel had faith in it either. Most Israelis were stunned, however, by Trump’s many measures to strengthen the security of the Jewish state and embrace its historical rights to its ancient homeland.

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