RUTHFULLY YOURS

Some House Republicans are optimistic that President Trump next month will allow the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after deciding against the move in June.

Trump signed the waiver under the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 to delay the move, arguing that he wanted to let the administration’s efforts at fostering an Israel-Palestinian peace process play out.

“I want to give that a shot before I even think about moving the embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump told Mike Huckabee last month.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), co-chairman of the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, urged Trump not to sign the waiver again, adding that Israel is not “giving up Jerusalem.”

“I’ve been the leading proponent in the Congress for relocating our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” said DeSantis at The Middle East Forum’s briefing on “Organizing for Israel Victory” in the Capitol on Wednesday. “The president promised he would do it. He likes to follow his promises. I think with this waiver coming up in December, I don’t think he should sign the waiver for stalling the move. I think he should let the law kick in, the ’95 law. It’s been 22 years since that law was enacted by the Congress.”

DeSantis said he does not “buy” the argument that moving the embassy has been a “national security threat” for 22 years.

“We did a trip in March. We’ve identified sites. It can be done by just flipping a sign, so I am hoping that happens coming up. I think it would have been more ideal to do it on Day One or at least in May when he went over for the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War but nevertheless that’s where we are here,” he said.

“To me, Jerusalem is off the table” in talks, he added. “We have to put that embassy there and say this is Israel’s eternal capital, and we shouldn’t have any delusions that somehow Israel is going to be giving up Jerusalem.”

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said he is “not disappointed” the embassy has not been moved, but he’s optimistic Trump will do so before the end of his first term.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) shared a different point of view.

The choice of business and social partners should be based – objectively – on a proven track record, not – subjectively – on unproven hopes and speculation.http://bit.ly/2hxkCik

Similarly, the assessment of the potential impact of the proposed Palestinian state on US national security should be based – objectively – on documented, systematic, consistent Palestinian walk (track record) since the 1930s, not – subjectively – on Palestinian talk and speculative scenarios.

Furthermore, an appraisal of the Arab attitude toward a proposed Palestinian state should be based – objectively – on the documented, systematic and consistent Arab walk since the mid-1950s, not – subjectively – on the Arab talk.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, the documented track record of the Palestinian political, religious and media establishment has featured K-12 hate-education and religious incitement. This constitutes the most authoritative reflection of the worldview, state-of-mind and strategic goals of the proposed Palestinian state.

Moreover, since the 1930s, the Palestinian track record has highlighted close ties with the enemies and adversaries of the US and the Free World.

For example, the Palestinian Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, whose memory and legacy are revered by the Palestinian Authority, embraced Nazi Germany, urging Muslims to join the Nazi military during World War II. Moreover, in 2017, Hitler is still glorified by Palestinian officials and media, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a best-seller in the Palestinian Authority.

During and following the end of WW2, the Palestinian leadership collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest intra-Muslim terror organization – which also aligned itself with Nazi Germany. In fact, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas were key leaders of the Palestinian cell of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.

‘Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Simon Schama posted an open letter in The Times in which they said they were “troubled by the tone and direction of debate about Israel and Zionism within the Labour Party”.

In the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government committed its support to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the trio say: “Zionism is the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. We believe that anti-Zionism, with its antisemitic characteristics, has no place in a civil society.”

In 2009, Booker Prize winner Jacobson, now 75, wrote that criticism of Israel was “a desire to word a country out of existence,” and this week he again equated criticism of Israel with the will to destroy it.

“We do not object to fair criticism of Israel governments,” the three wrote, “but this has grown to be indistinguishable from a demonisation of Zionism itself – the right of the Jewish people to a homeland, and the very existence of a Jewish state.”

They said Jewish conspiracy theories had resurfaced along with “the promotion of vicious, fictitious parallels with genocide and Nazism,” adding: “How, in such instances, is anti-Zionism distinguishable from antisemitism?”

Adding their voice to a growing debate about anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the authors also allege that anti-Zionists “claim innocence of any antisemitic intent” but “frequently borrow the libels of classical Jew-hating”.

Turning their combined attention to Labour, they say “such themes and language have become widespread in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party… so far the Labour leadership’s reaction has been derisory. It is not enough to denounce all racisms”.’

One of the many things the west fails to grasp about the State of Israel is how important it is to the security of the west, as well as the role that the Jews of that land have played in helping defend western lives since before Israel was reborn.http://www.melaniephillips.com/wests-vital-strategic-asset/

Col Richard Kemp, Britain’s former commander in Afghanistan, has written a greatpiece about this that should be essential reading. Here’s a flavour:

“For many years Western nations have depended heavily on Israeli intelligence, and the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State have even further increased the West’s reliance on Israeli intelligence… Of a far more sensitive and of course highly classified nature, Israel makes a major contribution to Western nuclear defences. On the homeland security front few Europeans are aware that Israeli technology safeguards such iconic symbols as Buckingham Palace, Heathrow Airport, the Eiffel Tower, and the Vatican.

But as we who have worked in the intelligence world know, action is premised on more than capability. Israel is not a vital strategic asset because of capability alone. Intent is equally important.

Why did the farmers and scouts of Hanita take such risks and make such sacrifices for the British in 1940? Neither they nor their fellow Jews who sustained and fought for the Eighth Army were under any obligation to do so. But nevertheless in the 1940s the Jews of Palestine contributed much more to the Allied war effort than all of the Arab nations combined who between them had over 50 times the resources of the Jews.

… Why do European countries exploit Israel’s capabilities with one hand and stab her in the back with the other? One word sums it up: appeasement. Every European country has a large and growing Muslim population and an increasing fear of Islamic terrorism. Political leaders believe that a harsh approach toward Israel will give electoral advantage in respect of their Muslim populations and also discourage Islamic terrorists from attacking at home.

A much longer-standing target of their appeasement is the Arab world itself and concern about the negative impact that their dealings with Israel will have on their relations with other countries in the Middle East.

But the balance has been shifting and European diplomacy has struggled to keep up.For many years Israel has had close strategic relations with two of its main Arab neighbours. And today in the face of a growing fear of Iran and the rise of radical jihadism, other Arab countries are increasingly, if cautiously and quietly, looking toward Israel for protection and assistance.

The Arab world will not suddenly fall in love with the Jewish State, but the sands are shifting and in their own security interests, Western states also now need to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel and appreciate what is the balance of cost and benefit to them.

… A modern day Balfour Declaration could be recognition of the strategic value of the Jewish state in today’s global struggle in the form of full membership of a reformed NATO, which would benefit all of our strategic interests and serve also to undermine international efforts to isolate Israel.”

Bravo.

In a not-so-earth-shattering move, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has appointed a Palestinian-American, Joyce Ajlouny, as its new Secretary General. Ajlouny is a native of Ramallah and formerly the head of the Quaker school there, a “passionate” advocate for Palestinians and for “evenhandedness.”

Ajlouny may be the perfect candidate to run the AFSC, the leading American Quaker organization, which over the years has cultivated its image as peaceful and supremely benign. Few suspect, much less know, that one of their central missions these days is promoting the BDS movement that opposes Israel’s existence.

How did a century-old religiously based pacifist organization transform itself into one of the leading engines for the Palestinian cause? Part of the answer lies in the AFSC’s evolution, which has gone from trying to save Jews to vilifying them. Its Quaker theology has similarly gone from emphasis on the “Inner Light” that guides individual conscience to something like old-fashioned Christian supersessionism, where Jews deserve to be hated. The result is that the organization is now effectively captive to progressive Israel-hatred.

Founded during World War I to provide alternative forms of “service” to pacifist Quakers, the AFSC quickly became one of the foremost refugee relief organizations of the early 20th century, with operations around the world. A favorite of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, the AFSC was also active within the US during the Depression, teaching skills across Appalachia and the South.

With the rise of Nazism, AFSC became involved with what would be the greatest refugee crisis in history. But the experience also demonstrated the organization’s approach to religious diplomacy and relief efforts, where naïve idealism alternated with practicality. Shortly after Kristallnacht in November 1938, AFSC leaders traveled to Germany to personally investigate the suffering of the Jews and pled their case with Reichsführer-SS Reinhard Heydrich to bring relief aid. They were unsuccessful.

But the AFSC’s post-war record in refugee relief was so exceptional that along with a British Quaker group, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. By the late 1940s, the AFSC had a distinctive place in American and international society, a well-established Christian NGO with global reach. But it was also a universalist organization that went against the grain to unpopular causes. Its humanitarian ethic and pacifist ideology were radical both in the American and Protestant contexts. These tensions would ultimately undo the AFSC.

The shift began when the AFSC was invited by the United Nations to run Palestinian refugee relief in Gaza in late 1948. Quakers had been in the Holy Land for over a century, running schools and hospitals for local Christians. But the refugee program was a turning point. Relief workers had never encountered refugees who did not want to be taught new skills or to be resettled elsewhere, only to be maintained at someone else’s expense until Israel disappeared.

So traumatic was this for the AFSC that after 18 months it refused to be part of any future Palestinian refugee program, citing among other things the “moral degeneration” of the refugees brought on by becoming welfare recipients. This view was prescient—almost seventy years later, the Palestinians remain the world’s largest recipients of international welfare through UNRWA and the UN system.