ISRAEL Comments turned off

Lessons from Israel’s First US Ambassador By Dr. Asaf Romirowsky

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-ambassador-james-mcdonald/

Following Harry Truman’s recognition of the Provisional Government of Israel in early 1949, James McDonald was appointed the first US ambassador to the nascent Jewish state. In his memoirs, McDonald discusses Israel-Diaspora relations, which are as central today as they were in the early days of the State. This topic continues to be a source of division: witness the slanderous attacks made by Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar regarding American Jews’ “dual loyalties” and the State of Israel.

After the slanderous assaults on American Jews and on Israel by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, there was a slew of condemnations from many sectors of the American political establishment and the Jewish community. Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called on Omar to apologize and said: “I welcome debate in Congress based on the merits of policy, but it’s unacceptable and deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens because of their political views, including support for the US-Israel relationship. We all take the same oath. Worse, Representative Omar’s comments leveled that charge by invoking a vile anti-Semitic slur.”

James McDonald, who was appointed the first US ambassador to Israel in 1951, understood the vulnerability of American Jews to such slurs. He wrote in that year:

Israel, it must be remembered, is not only a nation among the nations but also a Jewish community among Jewish communities. Unique though it is in being a community not scattered but together, not a minority but a majority, not a factor in the State but its author and raison d’être, it is still one Jewish community among others. Because of its special position it has special problems in its relationships with the other communities…Against the extreme Zionist (or anti-Zionist) logician who holds that the Jew has a clear-cut choice – complete assimilation or return to Israel – stands the stubborn experience of history, which suggests that here again reality thrives on apparent inconsistency. Every available indication is that the Diaspora will continue to exist and will continue to face many problems in relation to Israel. One of these problems grows out of the old bogy of dual allegiance. Can one be a Jew and an American, a Jew and an Englishman? This problem is inherent, I think in the very nature of man as a complex being with diverse ends. All men have not single but multiple allegiances. If a Jew has an emotional sympathy for another State because in that State live other Jews, his attitude is no different from that of an American of Irish descent who has an affection for Ireland and interest in its welfare.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Rape of 7-year-old by Palestinian called ‘terrorism’ by Right

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Rape-of-7-year-old-Jewish-child-shocks-the-nation-Palestinian-suspected-592809

A rape of a seven-year-old Israeli girl by a Palestinian man earlier this year has turned into a political football, with right-wing politicians calling it a hate-motivated “terrorist attack.”

The suspect, a resident of the West Bank town of Deir Qaddis near Modi’in Illit who was employed as a school cleaner in a settlement, was charged on Sunday for the alleged rape, assault and abduction of the child.

Police claim that the man met the child during his work as a school cleaner, offered her candy to inspire her trust in him, and eventually led her forcibly to a house near the school to assault her. The suspect claimed he didn’t commit the crime, and police have been unable to track down two other men who were allegedly present at the time of the attack.

The Military Advocate-General reported on Monday that there is no indication that the rape was motivated by nationalistic ideology, Maariv reported. However, the attorney for the family – which lives in the Binyamin area of the West Bank – from the Honenu National legal defense organization told Ynet that the suspect attacked the girl because she was Jewish.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Italian Stranglehold The EU could punish Rome for pushing pro-growth policy.

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-italian-stranglehold-11560716406

Italian Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini is favored to become the country’s next Prime Minister, and European Union mandarins are improving the euroskeptic’s chances. See how Brussels is handling its latest fiscal dispute with Rome.

The European Commission is on course to impose a fine of up to €3.5 billion on Rome to punish it for breaking EU budget rules. Governments are supposed to keep their fiscal deficit below 3% of gross domestic product and total debt under 60% of GDP. Many EU members violate these strictures, but Rome is unusually bad. Italian debt is expected to reach more than 135% in 2020, and the Commission frets about Rome’s deficit, which ran 2.1% in 2018.

This triggered a fiscal showdown last year, which ended when Rome agreed to make minor changes to its budget and Brussels pretended the numbers would add up. But now the EU complains that Italy’s motley left-right coalition government isn’t abiding by that deal and is teeing up another fiscal battle. A June 5 Commission report recommends opening up an “excess deficit procedure,” though it would take weeks and several bureaucratic hurdles before a fine is imposed.

The EU seems alarmed by Mr. Salvini’s tax-reform plan, which goes to show that Brussels doesn’t understand incentives for growth. Mr. Salvini wants to capitalize on the political boost from a recent European Parliament election win to push for a flat tax on personal and small-business incomes up to €50,000. He hasn’t divulged many details, but this is the best idea anyone in Rome has had in years to simplify Italy’s tax code and maybe cut down on evasion.

EU mandarins see only what they view as “lost revenue” from this proposal, but Italy’s fiscal crisis is building despite high taxes. Some 42% of GDP goes to the government. Rome wastes too much of that on misdirected social spending. What’s missing is economic growth to expand the tax base.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Palestinian Leaders’ War on Preventing Corruption by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14390/palestinians-corruption

The Palestinian Authority has chosen to crack down on anti-corruption activists as part of an effort to silence its critics and deter others from demanding transparency and accountability.

Stories concerning rampant financial and administrative corruption in the Palestinian Authority do not surprise those who have been reporting on Palestinian affairs in the past two decades. What is surprising is the growing number of Palestinian individuals and groups who are openly defying Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior officials by talking about and exposing corruption.

What Palestinian leaders are actually telling their people, in other words, is that anyone who complains about corruption is a traitor working with the Americans and Israelis against the interests of the Palestinians. This charge not only carries the death penalty, it brings shame to the accused and his or her entire clan. Palestinians are thus understandably wary of such an accusation.

Palestinian leaders not only deny their people the right to institutions of proper governing, they are now doing their best to block any chance of improving their living conditions by boycotting the upcoming Bahrain conference, whose main goal is to offer Palestinians economic prosperity and rid them of failed leaders whose sole interest seems to be enriching their own bank accounts and those of their family members.

A growing number of Palestinians are demanding that the Palestinian Authority (PA) take serious measures to end financial and administrative corruption among its top brass.

Rather than heeding these calls, however, the Palestinian Authority has chosen to crack down on anti-corruption activists as part of an effort to silence its critics and deter others from demanding transparency and accountability. The Palestinian Authority’s measures against anti-corruption activists have angered many Palestinians, who are accusing their leaders of covering up for senior officials suspected of abusing power for their own personal gain.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China: “Protecting” the Arctic by Debalina Ghoshal

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14367/china-arctic

The Arctic — where both the United States and Russia maintain a military presence — is known for being rich in hydrocarbons. The Chinese, in their claims to such a valuable energy source, clearly do not wish to be left behind.

As China already has deployed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles — while planning to build and deploy floating nuclear reactors — in the South China Sea, it is certainly plausible that Beijing has similar plans for the Arctic.

Both China’s Arctic Policy and its Belt and Road Initiative seem paths towards what appears to be China’s aim at achieving global hegemony.

China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea by now is old news, but Beijing’s recent moves in the Arctic have been attracting attention.

The Arctic — where both the United States and Russia maintain a military presence — is known for being rich in hydrocarbons. The Chinese, in their claims to such a valuable energy source, clearly do not wish to be left behind.

Just as Chinese President Xi Jinping has been pushing the Belt and Road Initiative, he also aims to develop a “Polar Silk Road” for shipping lanes, which he believes are opening up due to glacial melting caused by global warming. This belief appears to stem from the “open polar sea” theory, according to which the polar seas created by climate change ultimately could be exploited for commercial purposes.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

When Normality Became Abnormal By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/16/when-normality-became-abnormal/

Donald Trump is many things. But one thing he is not is a defender of the 2009-2016 status quo and accepted progressive convention. Since 2017, everything has been in flux. Lots of past conventional assumptions of the Obama-Clinton-Romney-Bush generation were as unquestioned as they were suspect. No longer.

Everyone knew the Iran deal was a way for the mullahs to buy time and hoard their oil profits, to purchase or steal nuclear technology, to feign moderation, and to trade some hostages for millions in terrorist-seeding cash, and then in a few years spring an announcement that it had the bomb.

No one wished to say that. Trump did. He canceled the flawed deal without a second thought.

Iran is furious, but in a far weaker—and eroding—strategic position with no serious means of escaping devastating sanctions, general impoverishment, and social unrest. So a desperate Tehran knows that it must make some show of defiance. Yet it accepts that if it were to launch a missile at a U.S. ship, hijack an American boat, or shoot down an American plane, the ensuing tit-for-tat retaliation might target the point of Iranian origin (the port that launched the ship, the airbase from which the plane took off, the silo from which the missile was launched) rather than the mere point of contact—and signal a serial stand-off 10-1 disproportionate response to every Iranian attack without ever causing a Persian Gulf war.

Everyone realized the Paris Climate Accord was a way for elites to virtual signal their green bona fides while making no adjustments in their global managerial lifestyles—at best. At worst, it was a shake-down both to transfer assets from the industrialized West to the “developing world” and to dull Western competitiveness with ascending rivals like India and China. Not now. Trump withdrew from the agreement, met or exceeded the carbon emissions reductions of the deal anyway, and has never looked back at the flawed convention. The remaining signatories have little response to the U.S. departure, and none at all to de facto American compliance to their own targeted goals.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Dep. of Ed Investigates Foreign Cash Influence Over Universities Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274033/dep-ed-investigates-foreign-cash-influence-over-daniel-greenfield

Shortly, the media will discover the foreign collusion that it doesn’t want to see investigated.

The U.S. Education Department has opened investigations into foreign funding at Georgetown University and Texas A&M University as part of a broader push to monitor international money flowing to American colleges:

“The inquiries are part of a broader campaign to scrutinize foreign funding going to universities and to improve reporting by schools, according to a Trump administration official familiar with the effort.

More schools probably will face questioning as federal officials focus on an issue they see as crucial to transparency and national security, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Federal law requires U.S. colleges to report contracts and donations from foreign sources totaling $250,000 or more, but past filings from Georgetown and Texas A&M “may not fully capture” that information, according to the letters.

As an example, department officials wrote, both schools should have reported funding related to branch campuses they operate in Qatar, an oil-rich nation in the Mideast that hosts the outposts of several U.S. colleges.

POLITICS Comments turned off

How Buttigieg Entered the Anti-Israel Echo Chamber And adopted Obama’s foreign policy. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274003/how-buttigieg-entered-anti-israel-echo-chamber-daniel-greenfield

Last year, Pete Buttigieg, then the mayor of a failing Indiana city with a small Jewish community, and with unlikely aspirations for higher office, visited Israel. He suggested that Israel’s approach to security offered “a very important lesson in that that hopefully Americans can look to”.

Buttigieg had joined an American Jewish Committee delegation of mayors and came back with a seeming understanding of Israel’s precarious security situation and the danger of simplistic solutions.

 “One of the first things that was very clear to us is that there is not a unified or single voice for the Palestinian people. Most people aren’t aware of the difference between what’s happening in Gaza, run by Hamas in a way that is contributing to a lot of misery there, but also totally different than an environment where you would have a negotiating partner across the table,” he observed.

Fast forward a year and Buttigieg is running for president and threatening to cut aid to Israel.

In his foreign policy address, he falsely claimed that “the Netanyahu government is turning away from peace” and warned Israel, while, referring to himself in the third person, that “President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won’t help foot the bill.”

What happened? There are two answers.

When Buttigieg was running a conservative city with an active Jewish and Christian community, where it’s not unusual to see churches flying the Israeli flag, it was safe for him to be more pro-Israel. On the campaign trail of a radical primary, where anti-Israel protesters dogged his steps, things changed.

But the bigger answer goes inside the foreign policy factory to see how the sausage gets made.

Buttigieg’s foreign policy team is headed by Doug Wilson. Wilson, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the highest-ranking gay Pentagon official, is an obvious choice. Wilson chairs the Board of Advisors at the Truman National Security Project making him the guy to talk to for 2020 Democrats like Buttigieg interested in developing a foreign policy position at the national level.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Will Dems’ Presidential Fate Repeat Past Wins, or Past Losses? Where the battle stands — and what may tilt the scales. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273997/will-dems-presidential-fate-repeat-past-wins-or-bruce-thornton

Many Republicans are feeling optimistic about Trump’s reelection in 2020. The Mueller investigation, on which Democrats’ pinned their hopes for mortally wounding the president, has crumbled like a bride’s first pie crust. AG Barr, unlike the lollygagging Jeff Sessions, is vigorously investigating the corruption in the FBI and DOJ that led to government agencies’ interference in an election in favor of Hillary Clinton, and then their attempts to engineer a bloodless coup to remove a legally elected president. The economy is roaring, with numbers on growth, employment, and productivity not seen in decades. And international rivals like Iran and China are now being confronted rather than coddled.

Meanwhile, the Democrats appear to have lost their political minds. They have sunk deeper into the swamps of zombie socialism, illiberal identity politics, 1984-style censorship, legalized infanticide, climate-change apocalypse, and proposals to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For Republicans, these excesses portend a variation on their party’s victories in 1972 or 1980. But Dems apparently believe they can reprise Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s triumphs in 1992 and 2008. Each of these elections recalls the circumstances and issues that so far are shaping 2020.

Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 over George McGovern, who won only one state and lost his home state, was a decisive rejection of the Sixties on behalf of the “Silent Majority” angered over this attempted fundamental transformation of America. The sneering assault on traditional religion, customs, mores, and morals, one abetted by the media, popular culture, and universities, aroused a sleeping electoral giant. Nixon’s deft handling of the Vietnam War during his first term, which lead to a draw-down of U.S. forces––from over half a million in 1968 to a mere 50 in 1973–– and the end of the draft, took the war off the table despite the antiwar media’s earlier attempts to spin North Vietnam’s 1968 Tet Offensive, a disaster for the North, into an omen of American military defeat.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ibrahim: How CAIR Forced the US Army War College onto Its Knees The author of “Sword and Scimitar” gives the inside story of an ominous surrender. Jamie Glazov

Posted By on June 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274038/ibrahim-how-cair-forced-us-army-war-college-its-jamie-glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Islam, prolific writer, and author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007) He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS; his writings have appeared in the New York Times Syndicate, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst.  A sought after speaker, Ibrahim has briefed governmental agencies, including the U.S Strategic Command, lectured at the National Intelligence University, and testified before Congress.

Introduction: On June 10, the US Army War College (USAWC) surrendered to the demands of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—an “unindicted co-conspirator,” to quote the U.S. Dept. of Justice, in the largest terror funding case in American history, and a designated “terrorist organization” for nations such as the UAE.

CAIR’s hysterical propaganda campaign focused on presenting Ibrahim—a native Arabic speaker of Egyptian/Middle Eastern descent—as a “racist” and “white nationalist” who, if allowed to speak before the War College, would incite American soldiers to start murdering Muslims in the street.  In response, the US Army War College capitulated and canceled Ibrahim’s long-planned lecture on his newest book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, which was scheduled for this coming Wednesday, June 19, at the War College, located in Carlisle, Barracks, PA.

Frontpage: Welcome, Raymond, to Frontpage Interview. It’s an honor to have you here.

Let’s get right to it. What happened?