Biden Reverses on Change to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Twitter Name to Include West Bank and Gaza Adam Kredo 

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/biden-changes-u-s-ambassador-to-israel-tw

The Biden administration on Wednesday reversed a change to the U.S. ambassador to Israel’s Twitter account name to read, “the official Twitter account of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza” after a Washington Free Beacon report highlighting the shift.

For a time on Wednesday, the official Twitter feed for the U.S. ambassador to Israel had its title changed to add “the West Bank and Gaza,” territories the United States has for decades avoided taking a stand on due to ongoing peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. The title change sparked an outcry online, including among Republican lawmakers, and was quietly changed back to read only, “U.S. ambassador to Israel.” The State Department would not comment on the initial change or why it was changed back to its original form.

Embassy officials have speculated that the title was inadvertently changed by Twitter due to a technical glitch when the accounts were switched from the Trump administration over to the Biden administration. The Free Beacon could not confirm the veracity of these claims.

“The U.S. doesn’t have ambassadors to any other disputed territory in the world. Singling out Israel, once again, is wrong,” said Len Khodorkovsky, former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department. “Instead of building on all the progress that’s been made toward peace in the Middle East, the Biden administration seems to be reversing course toward the failed policies of the Obama years.”

During the Obama administration, former ambassador Dan Shapiro was referred to in official communications as the “U.S. Ambassador to Israel.”

Report: Anti-Israel Malley Joining Biden As Special Iran Envoy Jeff Dunetz

https://lidblog.com/robert-malley-iran/

Per Jewish Insider, President Biden is considering adding another Israel hater to his team. Robert Malley, who shared his anti-Israel views as part of the Clinton and Obama administrations, an adviser to Bernie Sanders, and grew up with a socialist dad who was a close friend of terrorist Yasser Arafat. According to the report, Malley will be joining the re-Obama administration as Biden’s special envoy to Iran. 

The potential appointment of Malley comes as members of the Biden transition team have begun to lay out the president-elect’s vision for diplomacy with Iran following the Trump administration’s 2018 withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement.

The Biden transition team declined to comment and noted that they do not presently have any personnel announcements.

A source familiar with the Biden team’s approach on Iran told JI, “The president-elect has said that if Iran resumes strict compliance with the JCPOA, the United States would return to the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations. But Iran is a long way from returning to compliance, and there are many steps in the process to getting there that we will need to evaluate once in office. Our first order of business will be consulting with Congress and our allies on the path forward.”

Beijing Fills the Mideast Vacuum China’s projection of power isn’t only a regional concern. It will eventually pose a threat to the U.S. By Robert D. Kaplan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-fills-the-mideast-vacuum-11611183756?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The Biden administration’s Middle East policy will reportedly focus on rejoining the Iran nuclear deal and renewing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. This could undermine key allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia while ignoring a core geopolitical challenge that few in Washington are addressing: growing Chinese influence in the Middle East.

Through its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested in a port near the Persian Gulf in Gwadar, Pakistan, and a military base by the entrance to the Red Sea at Djibouti. The Chinese also envision a military base at Port Sudan, further north on the Red Sea, and a naval facility at Jiwani, Pakistan, on the Iranian border. Then there are the new Israeli port facilities at Haifa and Ashdod, which the Chinese will likely be administering. Afghanistan could one day become a branch line for the Belt and Road corridor from western China through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. China is the largest trading partner for both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. China is investing billions of dollars in Egypt and more billions as part of a strategic pact with Iran.

Unlike many in Washington, who separate regions in order of perceived importance, Chinese strategists think organically about geography. They recognize that in a smaller, more interconnected and confining world, regions and continents work together and flow into each other. Thus, the Chinese know that the road, railway and port system they are building across the Middle East will one day give them a strong hand in Europe and East Asia—not to mention East Africa.

Beijing doesn’t take sides. China is happy to work with Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Rather than promote a liberal vision—or any vision—the Chinese are remorselessly mercantile and imperial in their approach. It’s all about money and transportation links: classical geography fitted to a postmodern world.

Biden’s Keystone Pipeline Kill On his first day he insults Canada and ends thousands of jobs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-keystone-pipeline-kill-11611184519?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden issued a blizzard of executive orders on his first day in office, including a diktat to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. This is a slap at Canada, and it sends a message to investors that playing by U.S. rules provides no immunity from arbitrary political whim.

TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) has been stuck in the quicksand of American politics for more than a decade. A 2004 executive order requires the State Department to approve cross-border projects. In 2008 TC applied for a permit to transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude per day from the Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted. Shipping bitumen by rail or tanker would result in 28% to 42% higher CO2 emissions and more leaks. No matter. President Obama in 2015 rejected the permit as an oblation to the Paris Climate accords.

President Trump gave the right of way, but legal challenges by anti-fossil fuel groups marooned the pipeline and ran out the clock on the Trump years. Now Mr. Biden is yanking Keystone’s permit and rejoining the Paris agreement. Neither action will matter to the climate.

Trump’s Top-10 Triumphs: A Last Look At A Remarkable Presidency

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/21/trumps-top-10-triumphs-a-final-look-at-a-remarkable-presidency/

President Donald Trump became an ex-president on Wednesday, as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. We wish him nothing but the best. But before we let Trump go, we thought we’d review some of his biggest accomplishments while in office. We call them “triumphs,” because they were all big achievements executed against great odds.

More than any other president of recent memory, Trump fought hard for average working Americans. And contrary to the epithets thrown at him by his far-left detractors in the Democratic Party, his policies helped low-income and minority Americans most of all.

We believe – we hope – that Trump’s post-presidential career and reputation will resemble President Ronald Reagan’s. For those old enough to remember, Reagan also was called every vile name in the book, from “senile” to “fascist” and everything between. Yet, today, in retrospect, his presidency shines as a beacon in our nation’s history.

Given the at-times unhinged nature of the criticism directed at Trump’s presidency by the left and Republican “never-Trumpers,” Trump’s performance in just four years was nothing short of remarkable. He promulgated dozens, if not hundreds, of successful policies that other presidents talked about, but never secured.

He reached so many we can’t highlight all of them. But here are 10 that we believe stand out — and that future presidents (are you listening, Joe Biden?) would be foolish to reverse or overturn:

Educational Ethnic Cleansing by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16977/educational-ethnic-cleansing

“Jewish people today on campus can be tolerated, protected or abused. At no point are they treated as equals.” — David Collier, Academia, January 18, 2021.

This Jew-hate is cloaked in anti-Zionism, a doctrine that claims the Jewish state, alone among the nations, has no right to exist. It seeks to whip up anti-Israel hatred by focusing on three core lies: accusations of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism.

The government has been working to persuade universities to adopt the IHRA definition, including the threat of removal of funding streams. Often bitterly contested by academic staff desperate to remain unchallenged in their bully pulpits, as of last autumn only 29 of 133 higher education institutions had complied….

“The goal is achieved! No more Jews at German universities,” the leading Nazi student newspaper, Die Bewegung, triumphantly proclaimed in 1938.

Of course, nothing like it could ever happen again. Except something like it is happening again — now, and in Britain. According to a report published this week by David Collier, a British researcher, some UK universities are now virtually Judenfrei: free of Jews.

This is a chilling indictment not just of British academia but of a liberal democratic society that has tolerated, often through ignorance or complacency, a wave of discrimination against Jews that has swept through the universities over recent decades. From these halls of learning antisemitism has spread out, driving and empowering what is now a solid movement that threatens Jews in various parts of society and has led to many of them leaving. This is not just in Britain. Collier characterises academia as “the epicentre of global antisemitism”.

Trump’s farewell speech and the enduring movement he sparked By Carole Hornsby Haynes

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/trumps_farewell_speech_and_the_enduring_movement_he_sparked.html

The radical left and treacherous Republicans are giddy over their success in getting rid of Donald Trump with their fraudulent overthrow of his landslide election and tarnishing his legacy with unwarranted blame for the Capitol breach.  Now they are turning their satanic wrath on the personal destruction of Trump’s nearly 74 million supporters.

Weak-kneed Republicans who rode the coattails of Trump to their own victories have now jumped ship, some saying that he created his own demise.  Highly critical, these Judases contend that Trump has been a failure as president in their attempt to undermine his many accomplishments while in office.

Donald J. Trump: On the Threshold of Greatness By Daniel Davies, Ph.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/donald_j_trump_on_the_threshold_of_greatness.html

Despite the many ways in which he’s reviled today, I believe that history will record Trump as one of America’s greatest presidents. Looking at America’s most admired presidents, I was able to identify the four criteria needed to earn that accolade:

First and foremost, the president led the country through a life and death struggle. 
Second, the president suffered intense defamation, attack, pernicious plots, and even demonization both domestic and foreign but prevailed.
Third, the president defended and supported our Republic’s foundational documents and institutions: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, including all Amendments, especially the Bill of Rights.
Fourth, he supported American liberty, prosperity, and social welfare. All the greats promoted the actualization of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights during their presidencies.

Four presidents have met all those criteria: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. One president, Donald Trump, is on the threshold of meeting those criteria. His place is reserved at Mt. Rushmore and history will tell if he is successful. If he is not successful, our nation may perish in the face of the life and death struggle we are now in.

The Make-Believe Election Results be damned, everyone will pretend that Biden is good news. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/19/the-make-believe-election/

Joe Biden is to be inaugurated Wednesday. Twenty-five thousand soldiers have been brought in to make sure there is no more funny business, and the Biden Administration reportedly has asked that guard units be vetted to weed out possibly dangerous Trump supporters. The inaugural parade was turned into a virtual event over fears that it might attract more pro-Trump than pro-Biden Americans. We have arrived at a very peculiar place, considering that this is the inauguration of the man who supposedly won more votes than any man in history.

Marco Travaglio, who may be Italy’s most influential journalist, was asked in a recent Italian TV interview what Biden’s victory meant. He said, “For us, what changes is that the U.S. will become more interventionist, while under Trump it had been more isolationist. In my opinion, with Biden we will have more wars than we had with Trump, who, being an isolationist, didn’t care about the world.”

The reporter, clearly displeased with this answer, pressed Travaglio further: “Aren’t you as happy about his victory as everyone—as most people are?”

“If I were an American I would be happy,” Travaglio replied. “As a European, I believe we had more to gain with Trump because Trump took his hands off the world. Indeed, strange things happened under Trump. There was peace between the Koreas, there were unique agreements between Israel and some of the Arab states, there was, let’s not call it peace, let’s say a small cooling, even if the war continues in Afghanistan . . . ”

Stabbing Hector’s Corpse Americans hate one thing more than a sore loser, and that is an arrogant, vindictive—and bullying—winner.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/20/stabbing-hectors-corpse/

In Homer’s epic Iliad, the Greek hero Achilles finally kills his hated archenemy, the often trash-talking Trojan warrior, Hector. 

After Hector dies, once frightened but now gloating Greek soldiers encircle and cowardly stab his limp corpse. 

Achilles even ties the ankles of the dead Hector to his chariot and in fits of mindless rage drags him around the walls of Troy. 

Homer then brilliantly shows how Achilles’ vindictive excess ensures sympathy even for the once-braggart Hector. Eventually, the adolescent Achilles relents, grows up, allows Hector to be buried, and accepts the tragic nature of a common humanity. 

If Democrats and the Left had wished to reinvigorate the Trump legacy, they could have done no better than unleashing their unhinged and often repulsive hatred of the last two weeks.   

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson recently boasted, “There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.”   

What method does Robinson advocate for the required mind-rinsing of these millions? The Chinese, Soviet, or North-Korean model?