This was released today by the Prime Minister's Office.
You should share it as much as possible on social media.
Let's go to the videotape.
RETWEET THIS: The Palestinian Authority pays convicted terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars. The more they kill, the more they get. pic.twitter.com/onrhdNDvl6
It goes to the core of the question of whether there CAN be a 'peace process.' Right now, the answer is clearly 'no.'
And the Trump administration - unlike its predecessor - seems to get it:
If you want to stop terrorists, you shouldn’t be rewarding them or their families for their heinous acts.
The White House seems to get that: On Wednesday, Al-Quds
reported that Team Trump will demand the Palestinian Authority end its
practice of paying terrorists and their families and stop funding Hamas.
The demand is part of a White House plan to restart
Israel-PA peace talks — the subject of a May 3 meeting between Trump and
PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Peace talks or not, Trump is right to demand an end to
rewards for those who slaughter innocents. However fair Palestinians’
political gripes might be, it doesn’t justify terror.
Plus, as we’ve noted before, US taxpayers fund the PA — and they surely don’t want their cash rewarding terrorists.
Stopping those payments won’t be easy. The PA has dodged
past efforts to halt them, and Abbas himself regularly encourages terror
attacks.
If only American Jews got it half as much as the White House does.
Change: Trump demands Sbarro murderer's extradition, tells 'Palestinians' to end incitement
One of Haaretz's editorials today speculated that ultimately, the 'Palestinians' will have to save Israel from enacting a 'two-state solution.' Israel Radio's midnight news gave two signals that the 'Palestinians' are being put in a position where they will have to behave properly, or there will be no support from the United States for a 'Palestinian state.'
First, the United States has demanded that Jordan extradite Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the Sbarro suicide bombing 16 years ago and drove the bomber to the downtown Jerusalem restaurant.
Tamimi scouted for a target before leading the bomber, Izz al-Din
Shuheil al-Masri, to the Sbarro restaurant. They arrived just before
2:00 pm, when the restaurant was filled with customers, dozens of women,
children and babies, and pedestrian traffic outside was at its peak.
Tamimi
departed before Al-Masri, thought to be carrying a rigged guitar case
or wearing an an explosive vest weighing 5 to 10 kilograms of
explosives, nails, nuts and bolts, detonated his bomb.
She is
currently a television host in Jordan, has hosted Hamas arch-terrorist
Saleh Arouri (who ordered the kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers in
June 2014), bragged of her involvement in others murders of Israelis and
is considered as a symbol of the Palestinians fight.
Israel Radio reported that Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life sentences (15 Israelis were murdered in the bombing and a 16th - Chana Nachenberg - is in a vegetative state to this day), but was released as part of the 'terrorists for Gilad' trade in 2011. Israel Radio said that two of the terrorists' victims were US citizens (I think it was actually more than two - Malki Roth and Shoshana Heyman HY"D were also American citizens).
Jordan may have a tough call to make, honoring its strong alliance to
the US, with trying to avoid offending its majority Palestinian
population and an anti-extradition trend in its court system, according
to Shurat Hadin which is representing the family of the victim Chana
Nachenberg (Finers and Nachenbergs) who was grievously injured in the
bombing and remains in Israel in a coma even until now.
According
to Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: "We are glad that
the US Department of Justice has decided to move forward against this
notorious mass murderer. We have been requesting for a long time that
this unrepentant Palestinian terrorist be rearrested, extradited and
prosecuted by American law enforcement officials."
"It was
outrageous that Israel released this criminal with so much innocent
blood on her hands and who has publicly rejoiced that she killed 8
Jewish children. For too long Jordan has become a safe haven for
Palestinian terrorists and, hopefully, this is a change of policy for
the new Trump administration, to start to pursue the numerous
Palestinians who have killed US citizens in Israel," she said.
Chana
Nachenberg's father, Yitzhak Bennett Finer, has responded: "We applaud
the efforts of the Department of Justice in trying to bring Tamimi to
justice and we hope they'll be successful. Our daughter Chana Nachenberg
had the prime of her life taken from her because she has spent the past
15 and half years in a vegetative state on a respirator as a result of
this inhuman act of the heinous bombing of Sbarros. Her daughter Sarah
has grown up without a mother and her husband David without the love of
his wife."
Jordan is highly unlike to extradite Tamimi. If the royal family is about anything, it's about self-preservation. Extraditing Tamimi (whose clan includes prominent Jordanian lawyers) would bring about fighting that has been unseen since the Black September uprising in 1970. There is almost no chance that King Abdullah will take that risk to keep the United States happy.
In a second report this evening, Israel Radio reported that the United States' Jerusalem Consulate's readout of Trump envoy Jason Greenblatt's meeting with 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen today included a demand that the 'Palestinians' stop incitement to terrorism.
During a meeting at the Palestinian
Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah, Abbas committed to combat
Palestinian incitement, the statement said. The Palestinian leader and
Greenblatt also discussed building up the PA’s security forces,
advancing the peace process, and improving the Palestinian economy.
According to the readout, Abbas told
Greenblatt that “he believes that under President Trump’s leadership a
historic peace deal is possible, and that it will enhance security
throughout the region.”
“President Abbas committed to preventing inflammatory rhetoric and incitement,” the statement added.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has been adamant that PA-sanctioned media and school
curriculum are responsible for inciting terrorism.
...
The Palestinian daily al-Quds cited sources in
the US Congress who said Greenblatt warned Abbas that US lawmakers are
working to condition US aid to the Palestinians — with the exception of
security assistance — on ending incitement, including payments to the
families of Palestinian terrorists.
The PA pays monthly stipends to families who
have a member who is considered to have been “martyred,” which usually
means being killed by an Israeli while carrying out a terror attack or
suspected attack, or who is spending time in Israeli prison for
perpetrating a terrorist act.
The US government has already taken measures
to ensure its aid isn’t funneled to the families of terrorists. That
includes paying the debts of the PA directly, rather than transferring
funds into the PA’s coffers.
In the 12th year of his four-year term, Abu Dodobird may have finally found an American President who is willing to stand up to him. The 'Palestinians' must be really disappointed that Hillary Clinton lost the election. Heh.
It starts: US threatens to leave 'human rights council'
The times, they are a changing. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has issued a clear threat to one of the 'achievements' of the Obama administration - the decision to join the United Nations 'human rights council.' In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy Magazine, Tillerson has told the council that unless it reforms itself, the United States will leave.
Tillerson, in his letter to the U.N.
advocates and human rights groups, said that while the United States
“continues to evaluate the effectiveness” of the Council, it remains
skeptical about the virtues of membership in a human rights organization
that includes states with troubled human rights records such as China,
Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
“We may not share a common view on
this, given the makeup of the membership,” Tillerson told the
organizations, who have urged continued U.S. membership. “While it may
be the only such organization devoted to human rights, the Human Rights
Council requires considerable reform in order for us to continue to
participate.”
If the United States ultimately were
to withdraw from the Council, that would mark a victory for one of two
factions within the Trump administration debating the future of U.S.
policy at the United Nations.
“Many who despise the Council want the
U.S. to stay in and undermine efforts by others to obsesses over
Israel—and put the spotlight back on human rights abusers the Council
regularly ignores,” said a GOP congressional aide. “But there are others
who see that as fruitless and wasted diplomatic effort.”
...
For the time being, Tillerson wrote,
the U.S. will participate in the ongoing session of the Human Rights
Council, to “reiterate our strong principled objection to the Human
Rights Council’s biased agenda against Israel.”
“Our aim is to fix the organization,” the Tillerson aide told FP.
Tillerson said U.S. priorities
including renewing the mandate of a U.N. Commission of inquiry into
atrocities in Syria, and underscoring U.S. support for U.N. special
rapporteurs for Iran, North Korea, and Burma. He also said Washington
would seek to renew the mandates of special rapporteurs investigating
the use of torture and promoting freedom of expression.
UN advocates said it was unclear
whether the administration is really mulling a withdrawal, or simply
putting more pressure on for reform.
Sadly, the United Nations and its constituent bodies, including the 'human rights council,' exist only to give prominence to an anti-Israel agenda. They have long since outlived their usefulness, and ought to be shut down. The land that they currently occupy on the east side of Manhattan would be worth far more as condominiums or office buildings.
This is going to be fun: US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley rips the Security Council's Israel obsession
Here's US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley telling the press about her first Security Council meeting - and she specifically mentions the shameful US abstention (and worse) on Security Council Resolution 2334 during the last days of the Obama administration.
Let's go to the videotape.
For those on the Left who are wondering why you lost the recent US election, you might want to start here.
How Donald Trump is bringing hope to the 'peace process'
After eight years in which most Israelis felt that they weren't getting a fair hearing at the White House, and in which Israel's Prime Minister looked more uncomfortable with each trip to the United States, times have changed. In a White House meeting earlier this week, President Trump allowed Netanyahu to say what nearly all Israelis believe and what former President Hussein Obama would never allow to be heard.
Despite his international protestations, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (like Yasir Arafat before him), has consistently denied
that the Jews have a historic connection to the Temple Mount. Far more
than arcane arguments over historical minutiae, the Arafat-Abbas
tradition of denying a longstanding Jewish link to Jerusalem is the
Palestinian’s inimitable way of saying that the Jews are simply the latest wave of Crusaders,
that Israel is nothing but a colonialist presence in the Middle East.
Just as the crusaders and colonialists of the past ultimately departed,
the argument goes, so too will the Jews.
The
belief that President Abbas sees the two-state solution as a
steppingstone to a one – Arab – state solution leaves many Israelis
cynical about the peace process and tiring of the rhetoric about two
states. Mr. Trump may have shifted that momentum.
President Trump afforded Prime Minister Netanyahu an opportunity to assert – despite American denials – that Palestinian schools’ textbooks teach Palestinian children to hate Jews. Israelis wholeheartedly believe that accusation to be true. They know of the Fatah Party’s incendiary boast on Facebook that it had killed 11,000 Israelis and that the Palestinian Authority recently named its fourth
school for Salah Khalaf, mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre
of Israeli athletes. While President Barack Obama obliquely acknowledged
in his eulogy for Shimon Peres, the former Israeli president and prime
minister, that “Arab youth are taught to hate Israel from an early age,”
Mr. Trump gave Mr. Netanyahu a stage from which to make the accusation
explicit.
Obama's eulogy for Shimon Peres - perhaps his first acknowledgment of mainstream 'Palestinian' hate for Israelis and Jews - came on September 30, 2016, nearly at the end of Obama's term, and at a point where it was likely designed to help Hillary Clinton's election prospects and not a sincere empathy with Israel's plight.
Daniel Gordis believes that Trump's openness to hear the Israeli point of view can only help the 'peace process.'
Outward
appearances of confidence notwithstanding, Palestinian leaders
undoubtedly understand that the jig is up – gone (for now) are the days
in which they can tell the world one story and their people another.
That actually gives Israelis hope that – if the Palestinians want
political sovereignty – the Palestinian Authority will have to lay the
groundwork by forging an entirely different narrative about Israel and
Jews.
There
is still no reason to assume that President Trump and Prime Minister
Netanyahu can forge a deal. Mr. Trump’s White House is in disarray, Mr.
Netanyahu is under investigation for corruption and politically
weakened, Mr. Kushner has not a day of diplomatic experience, the other
Arab countries that Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu hope will be part of an
agreement may or may not cooperate and Palestinian hatred of Jews may be
too deeply entrenched.
Yet
there is at least cause for a glimmer of hope. On Wednesday, whatever
ambivalences about Mr. Trump many Israelis have, they heard from a
United States president sympathetic to their story, sensitive to their
fears of Iran and committed to their safety. That may matter a great
deal. For Israelis who feel safe and protected are infinitely more
likely to make accommodations for peace.
Gordis is right that it's highly unlikely (to say the least) that Trump and Netanyahu can forge a deal. Not now and not in the next eight years. But that has nothing to do with investigations, disarray or weak political positions. Rather, it's because the 'Palestinians' have yet to give any indication that they are ready to accept a Jewish state of any size, shape or form, and that creating a 'Palestinian' state (God Forbid) will not be the end of the conflict, but rather moving on to a new stage against a much weakened Israel.
Don't expect it to happen in your lifetime or mine.
Trump effect: Arabs warn Hezbullah not to attack Israel (with a song you'll remember fondly)
What a difference a month makes.
An 'Arab official' has warned Hezbullah warlord Hassan Nasrallah not to attack Israel in light of President Donald Trump's support for the Jewish state.
According to a report in Al Hayat, published in London, an Arab
official warned Hezbollah that Israel would forcefully strike back
against any military attack the organization carries out and severely
damage Lebanon.
According to the report, the official said that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's ability to recruit "regional assistance" against
Hezbollah is high due to the era of US President Donald Trump. The
official further urged Hezbollah to behave cautiously and prudently.
Let's go to the videotape.
I wonder which Arab official warned Nasrallah not to attack....
Must see: Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl) comments at David Friedman confirmation hearing
Several people have sent me this video and it really is a must see. This is Republican Senator Marco Rubio (Fl) speaking at the confirmation hearings for David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel. He's awesome. This will be the best five minutes you will spend today.
JINO's protest David Friedman's nomination to be US Ambaassador to Israel
Several 'as a Jews' protested David Friedman's nomination as US Ambassador to Israel in a Senate hearing on Thursday.
Let's go to the videotape.
One of the things that upsets the JINO's is David's connection to the yeshiva in Beit El (a connection that is likely the result of one of his children studying there - that's usually how these connections are formed).
As the Senate holds a confirmation hearing Thursday on the nomination
of David Friedman, he could face grilling about his ties to Beit El, a
community north of Jerusalem located in the heart of the occupied
territory Palestinians demand for an independent state.
A bankruptcy attorney from the Five Towns area of Long Island,
Friedman is a major donor to Beit El and serves as the president of the
American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva, the U.S. fundraising arm of the
settlement’s Jewish seminary and affiliated institutions, including high
schools, an Israeli military prep academy, a newspaper for the
religious Jewish settler community and the right-wing news site Arutz
Sheva.
They make the entire town sound like shnorrers (beggars). In fact, the 'American Friends' setup is entirely legal - nearly every school in Israel that raises money in the US has one in order for donors to qualify for 501(c)(3) deductions. Each of the other institutions likely has its own 'American Friends' with the likely exception of Arutz Sheva, which the last time I checked was a commercial venture.
But even by Trump’s new standards, Friedman appears to be extreme.
Friedman is a fervent supporter of the settlements and an outspoken
opponent of Palestinian statehood.
“I have expressed my skepticism about two-state state solutions
because of what I perceive as the Palestinians inability to denounce
terrorism and recognize Israel as a legitimate state,” Friedman said.
If that's 'extreme,' I don't many Orthodox Jews in the United States or Israel who aren't extremists.
In Beit El, the Friedman Faculty House, which bears his and his wife’s
names on the facade, is built on private Palestinian land without
permission from its Palestinian landowners, according to the
anti-settlement watchdog Kerem Navot.
And now CBS is accepting claims by Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily as 'facts.' Prove it.
Two Saudi journalists and a Kuwaiti have called on US President Donald Trump to move his embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. All three journalists also make clear that the 'Palestinians' are no longer at the head of the Arab world's agenda.
In a January 25, 2017 article in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat,
prominent Saudi journalist 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the daily's former
editor and the former director of Al-Arabiya TV, discussed the issue of
the U.S. moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He
stated that the Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem is a settled
matter, and that moving the U.S. embassy there, or any other embassy,
would not lend legitimacy to the occupation. Rather, if U.S. President
Donald Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem as part of an overall peace
agreement, this measure could actually mark the end of the occupation
and the conflict.
Al-Rashed
also noted that, in the 2000 Camp David talks, Yasser Arafat sadly
missed an opportunity to restore East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as
part of then-U.S. president Bill Clinton's unprecedented proposal for
resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He added that today, due to
the crises plaguing the Middle East, "the Palestinian cause is no
longer central," although extremists exploit the Palestinian tragedy to
further their own interests.
It
should be noted that one day before Al-Rashed's article was published,
Saudi columnist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh published an article in the
official Saudi daily Al-Jazirah titled "The Palestinians Have No
[Choice] But Peace." Like Al-Rashed, he argued that the Arab world,
currently preoccupied with civil wars and with fighting home-grown
terrorism, no longer regards the Palestinian cause as its foremost
concern, and called on the Palestinians to forgo armed resistance and
embrace the two-state solution – for that is the only solution that is
feasible and supported by the international community.[1]
Kuwaiti journalist 'Abdallah Al-Hadlaq also expressed support for relocating the embassy, in a January 28, 2017 article in the Al-Watan
daily titled "Be Brave [Trump] – Move [The Embassy] to Jerusalem and
Trust in God." Quoting extensively from an article by Robert Satloff,
executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, which presents arguments in favor of the embassy move,[2]
Al-Hadlaq argued the move could involve extensive benefits and not only
dangers and drawbacks. He concluded by saying: "Wise and intelligent
diplomats, politicians and pundits are telling Trump, who is reluctant
to move the embassy to Jerusalem: 'Be brave, move it to Jerusalem and
trust in God."[3]
Satloff's piece is here. While it makes reference to 'west' Jerusalem, the facility in which the US consulate is currently located (pictured above) is practically on the line, although the US government likes to characterize it as 'west' Jerusalem, and it still serves (at least for now) as the US embassy to 'Palestine.'
Trump to Israel: 'Just do it (and stop talking about it)'!
On Thursday night, it was reported by Michael Wilner in the Jerusalem Post that Donald Trump believes in a 'two-state solution' and that Israel should stop making announcements that destroy that possibility.
The White House warned Israel on Thursday to cease settlement
announcements that are “unilateral” and “undermining” of President
Donald Trump’s effort to forge Middle East peace, a senior
administration official told The Jerusalem Post.
For the
first time, the administration confirmed that Trump is committed to a
comprehensive two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict
negotiated between the parties.
The official told the Post that the White House was not
consulted on Israel’s unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement
housing units over the course of his first two weeks in office.
“As
President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a
deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently
exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal,” the
official said.
"With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking
unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress,
including settlement announcements,” the official added. “The
administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all
parties on the way forward.”
Trump plans to bring up the peace
process in his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the
White House scheduled for February 15.
The JINO (Jewish In Name Only) Left was overjoyed. But that joy was apparently premature. Trump is apparently as pro-Israel as he has always been.
Trump says, shut up and build. That sounds more like Trump who is
asking Israel to play smart and to move only when the table is in your
favor.
“Not helpful in promoting peace,” said his White House spokesman today – and where have we heard that before?
Never from Trump. So something’s gone wrong and I don’t think it’s entirely Trump’s fault, nor do I think here we go again. He’s Obama all over again.
That
won’t happen. But over the years some of us have noticed Israel’s habit
of going public each time it hires an architect. As for me, it’s been
an astonishment how Israel telegraphs every move, particularly when it
comes to housing in Judea and Samaria.
Who asked?
What other country does this? What other country stops the presses to announce -- Hello World, We’re Building More Homes.
Got a problem with that? – and in unison the world says yes.
That
IS the wisdom of Chelm if you expect any other outcome, and that has to
be the cause of Trump’s annoyance. Immediately Israel’s High Court gets
into the act along with the “peace groups” and Haaretz and The New York Times and a day later France invites 70 countries for a Paris summit to denounce the Jewish State.
That leaves Trump boxed in and he says so himself, that it cramps his style and his space to maneuver.
How
many times a day can he take on the entire world, as he’s been doing,
and now must carry Israel on his back – as he has it figured.
All
for no good reason except that Israeli leaders do not know when to keep
quiet. Instead they keep rubbing it in and keep asking for trouble.
The
trouble comes when they speak loudly and then expect the United States
to carry the big stick…like stopping the UN from another 2334.
Have
we forgotten that personally Trump owes us nothing? The overwhelming
majority of American Jews voted against him. He knows this.
The
same majority protests his partial travel restrictions, which means
that while he wants to keep anti-Semites out, we want them in.
Even
pockets of Israelis were shown on television protesting Trump’s
immigration pause. That hurt and it sure wasn’t “helpful” in terms of
friendship.
Now we hear that Trump favors a two-state
solution and where did he get that if not from Benjamin Netanyahu who
keeps promoting that dangerous nonsense.
We can’t ask Trump to be more Jewish than the Jews or more Israeli than the Israelis.
Our only claim on Trump is that we are family. The United States and Israel share the same values.
Only Israel can be counted on through thick or thin throughout the region and he needs Israel as much as Israel needs him.
Trump knows this. But he’s asking Israel to play by new rules, which is to shut up and deal only when the time is right.
Greetings from Boston, where I landed yesterday morning. A brief post and then back to work.
The Washington Post is reporting that the entire senior executive level at the State Department has resigned, apparently out of fear of what might happen in a Trump administration. Keeping in mind that most of the senior echelon in the State Department is Arabist, this may be good for Israel, notwithstanding reporter Josh Rogin's obvious discomfort with it.
[Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in
Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the
land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search
for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State
Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick
Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively
involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under
Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.
Then
suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials
resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed.
Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr,
Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and
Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions,
followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who
have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month,
officials said. The other officials could be given assignments
elsewhere in the foreign service.
In addition, Assistant
Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan.
20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations,
Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete
housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the
State Department, its overseas posts and its people.
“It’s the
single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that
anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said
David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under
Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security,
management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very
difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the
private sector.”
All I can think of when I hear about the State Department securing diplomats is Benghazi, although that was clearly Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's fault, and not that of the State Department bureaucrats.
More encouraging is the fact that 'Palestinian' chief negotiator bottle washer Saeb Erekat is expressing 'shock' at President Trump's silence on Israeli 'settlement building.'
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced the approval of 2,500 housing units
in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, in order to accommodate the
housing needs of the residents and to return their daily routine to
normal.
The announcement followed the approval earlier this week of 566 new housing units in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramat Shlomo, Ramot and Pisgat Ze'ev.
While the United Nations and the European Union were quick to condemn the new construction, White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Tuesday declined to express a position on Israeli construction when asked about it in his daily press briefing.
"Israel continues to be a huge ally of the United States," Spicer
said, when asked about Trump's perspective on the Israeli plan to
implement the construction plans.
"He wants to grow closer to Israel to make sure it gets the full
respect in the Middle East," he continued. "We'll have a conversation
with the prime minister."
Responding on Wednesday to the White House refusing to comments, Erekat told AFP,
"We used to hear condemnations, we used to hear American positions
saying '(Israel) should stop settlement activities, it's an obstacle to
peace.'"
"Not commenting, does that mean that President Trump is
encouraging... settlement activities? We need an answer from the
American administration," he added.
Life has sure changed for the 'Palestinians,' hasn't it? If they don't get to the table and negotiate (for real) soon without preconditions, there's not likely to be much left to negotiate about. This whiny series of diagrams regarding future Israeli building plans in Jerusalem appeared in Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily (HaAretz). If all of these plans go through, Jerusalem will thankfully be surrounded with Jewish children.
All of this follows on the heels of yesterday's news that the first act of the Trump-Tillerson State Department was to place a hold on the $221 million parting gift that former President Hussein Obama attempted to give the 'Palestinians' and that one of President Trump's first executive orders would suspend aid to the United Nations or any of its agencies if they recognize a 'Palestinian state.'
Much of this is, of course, a reversal of Obama administration policy implemented during the last administration's first days in office. But if it lasts, the world will be a very different place four or eight years from now.
Will Donald Trump usher in the Messiah? (Jewish textual and numerical proofs and a little personal stuff)
I know I haven't posted in quite a while - I have been crazy busy with work, and that's what puts food on the table (and pays the debts).
And I know that it's already been the Sabbath in Israel for several hours, but I am in Seattle (yes, really) where there are still several more hours to go.
And today is Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States.
For those of you who are ambivalent or worse, here are some grounds for optimism - a video I received from my son who became a groom (yup, he's engaged) a bit less than two weeks ago (in fact, on the same day as I last posted).
Christmas spirit: UN quietly appropriated money on Christmas eve to create a blacklist of Israeli companies to target for BDS
Thanks to Barack Obama and John Kerry, the United Nations quietly appropriated $138,000 on Christmas eve to create a blacklist of Israeli companies for boycotting, divestiture and sanctions (BDS).
Lost amid the angry words that followed the Dec. 23 UN Security
Council vote that critics called an American betrayal of Israel was a
Christmas Eve appropriation of $138,700 to fund a database of companies
doing business in the West Bank. The measure puts UN prestige behind the
anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, say
critics.
“The types of data they are talking about acquiring
would be to form the basis for future sanctions against companies that
did business on the West Bank,” Fox News contributor and former U.S.
Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told FoxNews.com. “That’s the only
purpose of it that I can see.”
The request for funding, first adopted last April,
would “investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the
civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the
Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which
extends to East Jerusalem, and would “produce a database of all
business enterprises” working in territories disputed between Israel and
the Palestinians.
Bolton said the database is an “effort to lay the
groundwork” for the UN Security Council to follow up on its
anti-settlement declaration by imposing costly economic sanctions.
The US opposed the appropriation, but in the General Assembly, it does not have a veto. This appropriation is yet another consequence of Obama-Kerry stabbing Israel in the back on the Security Council vote. The only thing Congress can do in response is to stop funding the UN.
“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and
that's where America's embassy belongs,” Rubio said in a statement.
“It's time for Congress and the President-Elect to eliminate the
loophole that has allowed presidents in both parties to ignore U.S. law
and delay our embassy's rightful relocation to Jerusalem for over two
decades.”
A statement from Heller said that some State Department funds would be withheld until the embassy was relocated.
The GOP measure is in line with President-elect Donald Trump's support for moving the embassy. His pick for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, also supports that pledge.
...
“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Ted Cruz
said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration's vendetta
against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this
simple truth – let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate
venue for the American embassy in Israel — is shocking in some circles.
And that's the best part: Once this bill makes its way through Congress and lands on the President's desk, the President will be Donald Trump, and not the Jew-hating mamzer who currently occupies the White House.
'Palestinians' threaten violence if US moves embassy to Jerusalem
One of the first things Donald Trump did after he was elected President was to promise to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Now that they realize that Trump is serious (and has named my college classmate Dave Friedman his ambassador to prove it), the 'Palestinians' are responding in the only way they know how. They are threatening violence.
The Trump team has said that the US president-elect considers moving the embassy a "very big priority."
Throughout
his campaign for the presidency, Trump repeatedly said he would move
the US Embassy if elected – a political promise past US presidents have
frequently made, yet has never been held.
Longstanding US policy
is to treat the status of Jerusalem as an issue to be settled in
final-status negotiations with the Palestinians.
Longstanding US policy has also been to veto all anti-Israel resolutions in the Security Council, and not to let them pass, let alone orchestrate their passage. This is the best response of all to Obama's and Kerry's betrayal of Israel.
And if the 'Palestinians' kill each other in response, מה טוב.
In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer explains what was different about that UN Security Council resolution, and how the Obama administration stabbed Israel in the back by allowing its passage.
An ordinary Israeli who lives or works in the Old City of Jerusalem
becomes an international pariah, a potential outlaw. To say nothing of
the soldiers of Israel’s citizen army. “Every pilot and every officer
and every soldier,” said a confidant of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, “we are waiting for him at The Hague,” i.e. the International Criminal Court.
Moreover,
the resolution undermines the very foundation of a half-century of
American Middle East policy. What becomes of “land for peace” if the
territories that Israel was to have traded for peace are, in advance,
declared to be Palestinian land to which Israel has no claim?
The peace parameters
enunciated so ostentatiously by Secretary of State John Kerry on
Wednesday are nearly identical to the Clinton parameters that Yasser
Arafat was offered and rejected in 2000 and that Abbas was offered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Abbas, too, walked away.
Kerry
mentioned none of this because it undermines his blame-Israel
narrative. Yet Palestinian rejectionism works. The Security Council just
declared the territories legally Palestinian — without the Palestinians
having to concede anything, let alone peace. What incentive do the
Palestinians have to negotiate when they can get the terms — and
territory — they seek handed to them for free if they hold out long
enough?
Indeed. The Post can look back at this column from 2009 and realize that the 'Palestinians' were correct.
Yet
on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a
suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his
only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his
demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear
off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a
recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and
publicly accept the two-state formula.
Until Israel meets his
demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin
negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J.
Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building
measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze
settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an
interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."
And what the Post doesn't mention is that Netanyahu is reported to have offered even more in 2013.
If Hillary Clinton had won November's election, Israel would now have its back to the wall. Fortunately, Donald Trump won the election, and if he is willing to go to the wall in Israel's defense, perhaps this disgraceful resolution can be mitigated.
It's the last day of Chanuka, so I couldn't resist the graphic.
Some 2,300 years after the Hasmonean's Chanuka military victory (caused by some miracles from God), Daniel Pipes argues it's time for another Jewish victory.
I propose an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat. That is to
say, Washington should encourage Israelis to take steps that cause
Mahmoud Abbas, Khaled Mashal, Saed Erekat, Hanan Ashrawi, and the rest
of that crew to realize that the gig is up, that no matter how many U.N.
resolutions are passed, their foul dream of eliminating the Jewish
state is defunct, that Israel is permanent, strong, and tough. After the
leadership recognizes this reality, the Palestinian population at large
will follow, as will eventually other Arab and Muslim states, leading
to a resolution of the conflict. Palestinians will gain by finally being
released from a cult of death to focus instead on building their own
policy, society, economy, and culture.
While the incoming Trump administration’s Middle East policies remain
obscure, President-elect Trump himself vociferously opposed Resolution
2334 and has signaled (for example, by his choice of David M. Friedman
as ambassador to Israel) that he is open to a dramatically new approach
to the conflict, one far more favorable to Israel than Barack Obama’s.
With his lifelong pursuit of winning (“We will have so much winning if I
get elected that you may get bored with winning”), Trump would probably
be drawn to an approach that has our side win and the other side lose.
Victory also suits the current mood of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin
Netanyahu. He’s not just furious at being abandoned in the United
Nations, he has an ambitious vision of Israel’s global importance.
Further, his being photographed recently carrying a copy of historian
John David Lewis’s Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the
Lessons of History signals that he is explicitly thinking in terms of
victory in war: Lewis in his book looks at six case studies, concluding
that in each of them “the tide of war turned when one side tasted defeat
and its will to continue, rather than stiffening, collapsed.”
Finally, the moment is right in terms of the larger trends of
regional politics. That the Obama administration effectively became an
ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran scared Sunni Arab states, Saudi
Arabia at the fore, into being far more realistic than ever before;
needing Israel for the first time, the “Palestine” issue has lost some
of its salience, and Arab conceits about Israel as the arch enemy have
been to some extent abandoned, creating an unprecedented potential
flexibility.
#CHANGE Moderate Arab states ignore Obama-Kerry initiative
If the moderate Arab states were supposed to latch onto Secretary of State Kerry's 'peace proposal' and use it, along with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pressure Israel, someone forgot to tell them that. Or, as is more likely, they have read the handwriting on the walls, and have realized that they will have to work with Donald Trump for the next 4-8 years.
But the official responses in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman seemed
calculated to make an impression on the incoming Trump administration
rather than to impel any immediate or urgent follow up on the Kerry
proposals. That was not expected, given that Kerry and President Barack
Obama have only three weeks left in office and Donald Trump has signaled
there will be a friendlier approach towards the policies of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Now, with the imminent change in the White House, Kerry's noble
views may very well remain a small footnote in the history books," the Jordan Times wrote in an editorial Thursday.
Jordan,
Egypt and Saudi Arabia are, to some extent, groping in the dark,
uncertain about what Trump policies that will strongly impact their
futures will look like. By giving essentially positive responses to
Kerry's proposals, "they are trying to show they are pro-peace, useful
and very relevant as mediators and mainstays of the process and trying
also to anticipate what the new administration in Washington wishes to
do," said Gabriel Ben-Dor, a Middle East specialist at Haifa University.
The countries also have their sights set on being relevant in advance
of the January 15 conference bringing together some 70 foreign ministers
in Paris whose goal is to reaffirm the necessity of a two-state
solution.
...
As Tel Aviv University Middle East scholar Bruce Maddy-Weitzman has
noted, close scrutiny of Cairo and Riyadh's reactions to Kerry indicate
that neither Arab country has the sense of urgency that Kerry conveyed
in his speech. Egypt's Foreign Ministry said that Kerry's principles
were "mostly consistent with the international consensus and Egypt's
vision but in the end what is important is the will to implement those
principles eventually."
Saudi Arabia welcomed the proposals,
according to an official at the Saudi foreign ministry, who said Riyadh
views them as being in accord with the majority of the resolutions of
international legality. Riyadh said that Kerry's proposals have elements
of the Arab Peace Initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia and adopted by an
Arab summit at Beirut in 2002. It added that the proposals represent an
"appropriate basis" for achieving a final settlement of the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
But, Maddy-Weitzman noted "there is no operative clause in the Saudi response to move forward fast and do this or that."
"This
suggests the Saudis understand there won't be significant movement any
time soon as a result of the speech," he said. "They recognize there is a
new administration coming in that is expressing itself differently on
Middle East issues. Saudi strategic priorities are elsewhere. There are
more acute issues occupying their thinking. The Palestinian-Israeli
issue is lower down. That doesn't mean they don't care and would go
along with anything the Israeli government would do."
"At this
point, the Saudis won't take the lead on Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy
unless the Trump administration takes the initiative or something forces
them to, like a new intifada." But Riyadh will try to persuade the US
not to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem, Maddy-Weitzman predicted.
In its reaction to Kerry, Egypt was mindful of Trump's intervention a
week earlier against its sponsorship of the security council resolution
specifying that settlements have "no legal validity." Egypt withdrew its
sponsorship in deference to Trump and it formulated its response to
Kerry with Trump in mind, not wanting to appear to be confrontational
towards Israel.
Cairo, which viewed the Obama administration as
selling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Arab spring
revolt in 2011 and of subsequently backing the Muslim Brotherhood, has
high hopes for closer ties with Trump. Egypt is relieved to have an
administration coming in that will not make an issue out of its human
rights abuses in crushing the brotherhood and other opposition. "The
leaders of this 'terrorist' organization and those regional and Arab
powers that lend them support should realize that the election of Donald
Trump will usher in new directions for US foreign policy, which will
discontinue the 'interventionist' policies of the two previous US
administrations," wrote Hussein Haridy, a former foreign ministry
official, in al-Ahram weekly. "If this happens, there will be
much more effective cooperation between the American and Egyptian
governments in dealing constructively and successfully with existing
challenges and threats across the Middle East."
I haven't felt this optimistic since 2008, despite Obama-Kerry's attempts to incinerate Israel over the past two weeks. They're called 'lame ducks' for a reason.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
