RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17693/lebanon-normalization-israel

“Normalization” with Israel is not what is plaguing Lebanon. The Lebanese who are dying for lack of medication could not care less about “normalization” with Israel.

“Unfortunately, they sentenced me to 10 years in prison, but they sentenced the Lebanese people to life in poverty and humiliation. The military court in Lebanon did not give me any opportunity to defend myself. The court did not inform my lawyer in Beirut even of the trial date. It did not inform me personally of anything. The least that should have been done was to inform me of the date of the trial so I could defend myself.” — Dr. Jamal Rifi, sentenced to 10 years in prison for treating Israeli Arabs at the request of the Palestinian Authority, arabsaustralia.com, August 24, 2021

The case of Dr. Rifi is yet another example of the blind hatred in Lebanon and other Arab countries towards Israel. These countries are so blinded by their hate for Israel (and Jews) that they are even prepared to punish a physician who helped Palestinians living in Jerusalem. It can be fairly said of these Arabs that they are willing to fight Israel to the last Palestinian.

There is a further ironic twist to this fiasco. While most Arab countries are turning a blind eye to the deepening crisis in Lebanon, there is one country that appears ready to help the Lebanese people: Israel.

One day after the court verdicts were issued against Dr. Rifi and the other two Lebanese, Moshe Arbel, a member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) called on Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz to provide the Lebanese health system with emergency humanitarian assistance in light of the public health crisis as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political and economic crisis in Lebanon.

It is no wonder that Lebanon — which is dominated by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist militia — has become a failed state and is on the brink of collapse. A country that prioritizes fighting “normalization” with Israel over rescuing its own people from disaster will never be able to recover from its chronic illness of bigotry and hate.

The financial and economic crisis in Lebanon is dragging the country towards mayhem at a quickening pace, according to various reports. Lebanon is running out of critical medicines and is witnessing fuel shortages. The economic collapse has stripped the national currency of most of its value and left four out of five Lebanese citizens below the poverty line.

The World Bank has described the crisis as among the worst in over a century.

The crisis, however, has not stopped the Lebanese authorities from again displaying their hostility towards Israel. Instead of devoting its energies to solving the economic crisis and end the suffering of its people — not even to distract their people from problems they are clueless how to fix — the failed Lebanese government is busy combating “normalization” with Israel.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-dream-palaces-of-americans

When new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meets with President Joe Biden and his minders at the White House today, a few things seem like sure bets. First, Bennett and his aides will lay out a scheme for keeping Iran from going nuclear, which the Americans will nod at and ignore. Second, the American side will solemnly raise the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.

Instead of nodding, smiling, and pretending to share the dream of peaceful democratic Palestinian statehood, Bennett could show true friendship to America by pointing to the example of Afghanistan. It’s clear no one in the American political establishment has yet internalized the lesson.

For twenty years, official Washington, DC dared not describe Afghanistan as it truly is and would be after America’s exit. It would have been gauche to do so— worse, it would have shown that one lacked vision, high ideals. Anyone who didn’t believe there was a democratic polity just waiting to escape its despotic chains and unleash its liberal energies was guilty of “the soft bigotry of low expectations” — that is, a racist. In this fun-house-mirror version of Afghanistan, America was building yet another city on a hill, a citadel whose government would promote Western gender theory’s latest findings, which would be enforced by elite special forces units trained by American officers and loyal to the central government in Kabul.

These elements of the Afghani dream-state were part of a bespoke tapestry spun out by and for the policy establishment and Beltway defense contractors, NGO workers, think tank experts, and the rest of the client state. So long as everyone was getting paid, the mirage never hurt anyone — unless your child happened to subscribe to the fiction and put his or her life in danger either in uniform or as an aid worker. But now, the dream palace has burned to the ground, and as the smoke clears no one can mistake the fact that authentic Afghanistan is in the hands of the Taliban.

Bennett knows it would be more polite to nod along meaningfully with his hosts and that he’d insult them by explaining Palestinian statehood is a hallucination on the level of Afghani democracy. Speaking up, however, would nonetheless help safeguard the interests of his own country, while winning the favor of an American public that has seen their elites throw away the lives of thousands of the country’s most high-spirited and honorable young men and women to satisfy their whimsy.

Someone has to say something or else someday soon, the world will wake up to find that the Americans are no longer rich, and no longer capable of writing checks to flatter the vanity of an establishment that can’t distinguish reality from fiction. And maybe Bennett will be the man to shake their senses by simply stating the obvious ­— like the two-decade long effort to stand up democracy in Afghanistan, throwing lives and money at a future Palestinian state is a fools’ errand.

Bennett wouldn’t be the first to make the connection between the Palestinians and Afghanistan. In 2013, former secretary of state John Kerry gave evidence that the US establishment saw the two deadly fantasies as linked. He invited Bennett’s predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu “on a secret visit to Afghanistan to see, in his words, how the US established a local military force that can stand up to terror on its own.” The message, Netanyahu said in a recent Facebook post, was clear: Kerry thought that the model the US employed for Afghanistan would work for the Palestinians, too.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/benny-gantz-is-confused-on-iran-677847

Defense Minister Benny Gantz may very well be correct in his assessment, which he shared with 60 ambassadors in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, that “Iran is only two months away from acquiring the materials necessary for a nuclear weapon.”

But he’s delusional if he thinks that a diplomatic “Plan B” – to replace the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – is going to stop it.

“We do not know if the Iranian regime will be willing to sign an agreement and come back to the negotiate[ing] table,” Gantz said, alluding to the recent rise to power in Tehran of Ebrahim “the butcher” Raisi, ostensibly less likely than his immediate predecessor to cooperate with the West.
It’s a fallacy, of course, since Raisi, like former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, takes his orders from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to reach a ‘longer, stronger and broader’ agreement than the previous one,” Gantz told the group of foreign-service diplomats.

Is it, though?

BY NOW, Gantz ought to be aware that even if the Islamic Republic consents, yet again, to reaching a deal with the P5+1 countries (the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany), it will not honor its commitments. It was not merely the content of the JCPOA that gave the mullah-led regime leeway to pursue its nefarious hegemonic aims, after all. 

On the contrary, the powers-that-be in Tehran violated all clauses of the worthless document, which in any event only postponed Iran’s inevitable nuclear capabilities; it didn’t prevent them permanently. Despite multiple attempts by the administration of former US president Barack Obama, abetted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, to obfuscate this fact, it wasn’t exactly a secret.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-three

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has turned “their plight into a political tool” for Israel’s destruction, Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR) Director David Bedein noted in 2014. His book, Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, is essential for understanding UNRWA’s cruel exploitation of humanitarianism in order to wage war on Israel.

As previously discussed, over five million Palestinian “refugee” descendants of Arabs who lost their homes in what became Israel during its 1948-1949 War of Independence are the wards of UNRWA. This outsized agency uniquely exists outside of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which cares for all other refugees worldwide. UNRWA has also uniquely emphasized a “right of return” to modern Israel as a permanent solution for Palestinian “refugees.”

They “are the only ones in the world who have sustained their status as refugees across four generations; and their misery has been utilized as a weapon against Israel,” Bedein wrote. Any “right of return” influx would demographically inundate Israel. Thus, “Israel understands that ‘return’ is a code word for destruction, something the Jewish state will never permit,” he added.

Indeed, Bedein quoted Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Muhammad Saleh Ed-Din to this effect. He wrote in 1949 that “in demanding the restoration of the refugees to Palestine, the Arabs intend that they shall return as the masters of the homeland” and “annihilate the state of Israel.” As Bedein reviewed, the

‘Right of Return’ issue was often mentioned in Arab forums within the wider context of the discussion of Israel’s liquidation. In Israeli eyes, therefore, the continued persistence on the ‘Right of Return’ by any Arab party betrays that party’s desire to wipe Israel off the map.

“Tragically, UNRWA emphasis on ‘right of return’ provides Palestinians with a rationale for their war against Israel,” Bedein observed, and correspondingly UNRWA “camps, quite simply, function in a pro-terrorist environment.” “Terrorist activity in the UNRWA refugee camps has been extensively documented” by monitors such as the Israeli Shin Bet intelligence service, he wrote. Shin Bet has “documented how UNRWA schools are used for storing ammunition, as well as for hiding suspected terrorists,” while UNRWA vehicles and ambulances also transport terrorists and ammunition.

During your first official visit to Washington, DC, you’ll have to choose between two options:

*Blurring your deeply-rooted, assertive Israeli positions on the future of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which would be welcome by the Biden Administration, yielding to short-term political convenience and popularity inside the beltway;

or

*Tenaciously advocating your deeply-rooted, principle-driven positions, which would underscore a profound disagreement with the Biden Administration and the “elite” US media, while granting you and Israel long-term strategic respect, as demonstrated by some of your predecessors.

For example, the late Prime Minister Shamir honed the second option, bluntly introduced his assertive Israeli positions on Judea and Samaria, rebuffed heavy US pressure – including a mudslinging campaign by President Bush and Secretary of State Baker – suffered a popularity setback, but produced unprecedented expansion of US-Israel strategic cooperation. When it comes to facing the intensified threats of rogue regimes and Islamic terrorism, the US prefers principle-driven, reliable, patriotic, pressure-defying partners, irrespective of disagreements on the Palestinian issue.

Assuming that you shall not budge on the historical and national security centrality of Judea and Samaria, it behooves you to highlight the following matters during your meetings with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Austin and Congressional leaders (especially the members of the Appropriations Committees):

1. The 1,400-year-old track record of the stormy, unpredictable, violent and anti-“infidel” Middle East, which has yet to experience intra-Arab peaceful-coexistence, along with the 100-year-old Palestinian track record (including the systematic collaboration with anti-US entities, hate-education and anti-Arab and anti-Jewish terrorism) demonstrates that the proposed Palestinian state would be a Mini-Afghanistan or a Mega-Gaza on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

It would dominate 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructures in the 9-15-mile sliver between Judea and Samaria and the Mediterranean, which is shorter than the distance between RFK Stadium and the Kennedy Center.

Thus, a Palestinian state would pose a clear and present existential threat to Israel; and therefore, Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria is a prerequisite for its survival.

https://www.meforum.org/62587/mandelbaum-bidens-middle-east-policy-challenges

Michael Mandelbaum, professor emeritus of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and author of The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, spoke to a July 26 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the Biden administration’s foreign policy challenges, specifically regarding the Middle East.

According to Mandelbaum, the Biden administration is handicapped by the fact that its foreign policy team is dominated by Obama administration personnel who formulated their worldviews during the “post-Cold War” era in which the U.S. “faced no serious threats.” We now live in what Mandelbaum calls the “post-post-Cold War world,” in which the U.S. faces three “major challengers”: China, Russia, and Iran. The Biden administration “has no experience dealing with what is the central issue in foreign policy when there are challengers, namely whether, when, and how to use and threaten force.”

Biden is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where good American foreign policy should be.”

The administration is also handicapped by the fact that the Democratic Party has “moved sharply to the left.” As a result, the Biden administration is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where the country is, and I would say to the left of where good American foreign policy should be,” said Mandelbaum. Although “every administration has to navigate when it comes to foreign policy between politics and policy, that task seems to me to be perhaps unusually complicated and difficult for this administration.”

While Mandelbaum observed that the Biden administration has “adapted to the new circumstances” with respect to China and Russia, at least rhetorically, “the necessary, or at least desirable, adjustments are not in evidence … [regarding] four relevant issues in American policy toward the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran.” He discussed each of these in turn.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bennett-cant-have-it-both-ways-with-biden/

(August 24, 2021 / JNS) It’s hard to figure out what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meant when he told his Cabinet on Sunday that in his upcoming visit to the White House, he intends to present U.S. President Joe Biden with an “orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians, both in the nuclear sphere and vis-à-vis regional aggression.”

After all, Israel has been leading the battle against the regime in Tehran for decades, ever since it was taken over by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. This fight hasn’t been merely rhetorical, though former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu devoted much of his career articulating, verbally and in print, the dangers that a nuclear Iran would pose to the Middle East and the rest of the world.

He understood, as Bennett surely does, that since the Jewish state is a key target of the mullahs’ genocidal aims against the “infidels,” Israel has had no choice but to try to persuade other countries to wake up to the threat—or go it alone.

Some American administrations have recognized this more than others; the same applies to different constellations of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

It hasn’t been a question of accepting Israel’s warnings about Iran. Rather, it’s been an issue of how best to keep the Islamic Republic’s race for the A-bomb in check.

Left-wing politicians and pundits from both the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Small Satan” (Israel), tend to believe that the only way to do this is through a deal. Those on the right think that negotiating with a state sponsor of global terrorism is as pointless as doing so with its proxies, which happily dispatch “martyrs” to undertake the up-close-and-personal dirty work. You know, the kind that enables them to watch the blood and gore that they extract from their victims.

When Biden’s immediate predecessor and former boss, President Barack Obama, entered the picture, Israel was in trouble. Fans of the “hope and change” candidate on either side of the ocean would come very quickly to attribute the soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem to Netanyahu.

They were wrong to do so.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/unrwas-jihad-against-israel-part-two

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East or “UNRWA was nurtured from its beginnings to avoid any permanent solution to the plight of the refugees” from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. So documented Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR) Director David Bedein in his previously discussed insightful 2014 book Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict—UNRWA Policies Reconsidered.

As Bedein explained, UNRWA has caused the 1948 “Arab refugee crisis to persist longer than any other refugee situation in the world.” This longevity results from UNRWA’s definition of Palestinian refugees as including not just those who lost their homes in what became Israel in 1948-1949 but also their multigenerational descendants. Simultaneously, UNRWA has insisted that this community may only end its refugee status through a “right of return” to what is now modern Israel.

Contrary to UNRWA, Bedein observed, the “1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees makes no mention of descendants.” This convention also “exempts from refugee status a person who ‘has acquired a new nationality,’” he added. While such acquisition of new citizenship usually ends refugee status, UNRWA’s refugee “definition makes no mention of newly acquired nationality.

Meanwhile a Palestinian right of return “has no legal precedence in history and, indeed, has not been applied in other cases of wartime refugees throughout the twentieth century, which witnessed a record number of such refugees,” Bedein noted. Proponents of this claimed right often wrongly invoke the December 11, 1948, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. Yet at this time, UN officials “were concerned that an international guarantee of the ‘right of return’ for refugees could be applied by the millions of Germans” who lost their homes in Eastern Europe following World War II.