All is not lost. Trump still has a pulse.

By Ted Belman

In the last month at least I have been posting articles which herald’s Trump’s decline into captivity. My feelings descended to the nadir when McMaster fired so many Trump people and Trump did nothing.

As we know Trump has abandoned Israel’s interests in Syria. And he wimped out on the Iran deal cancellation.

I believe Bannon will be more effective on the outside than he was on the inside.

I am happy to say, there are still signs of life.

1. Afghanistan. Most feel this speech was a departure from his agenda which was to quit the field. Now in reading the speech, what one thinks of his plan depends on what one focuses on. Trump said “the American people are weary of war without victory.”, our soldiers “deserve the tools they need, and the trust they have earned, to fight and to win.” and “we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily.” Thus Trump is in it win it. Thus his new plan has victory in mind.

2. I was quite satisfied with what he said about the violence in Charlottesville. He kept doubling down. Unfortunately when he said after the Boston violence, “I want to applaud the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!”. This really upset me as he appeared to have caved entirely.

But he came roaring back in Pheonix and again double down on his remarks about Charlottesville and blasted the MSM. He also attacked McCain and Flake without naming them. He also, all but pardoned Sheriff Joe. All this was unscripted.

Cohn when deciding not to resign admonished Trump to do more to condemn the neo-Nazis and KKK. It seemed to me that he and the liberal-left are pressuring Trump to focus his ire on them and thus to ignore Antifa etc.

He also promised in no uncertain terms, that the wall will get built. He is staking his Presidency on it.

3. Al Sisi refused to meet with Kushner, because the State Department had maintained Obama’s policy of with holding aid, Trump called him and assured him that the US is there for Egypt. Very important break from the past. Al Sisi then met with Kushner.

4. Finally, The State Department refused to endorse a two state solution.

5. As I said before, the litmus test will be when the US must declare Iran is abiding by the Iran deal in two months time. He has intimated he will act differently next time. Of course firing McMaster will mean he is fully recovered and is now in charge.

August 25, 2017 | 61 Comments »

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  1. @ Bear Klein:
    Yes. If I read what the people who lived through it had to say, as well as the scientists who measured and understand the phenomenon. Why are you evading the question.

    Why?. Have you lived through what those hilltop kids and their parents went through?

    Are you an authority just because you live in the same country?

    How?

    Osmosis?

  2. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Let me try and communicate with you like this. Have you ever lived through a huge natural disaster let us say an earthquake 7.0 on the Richter scale or more? If yes do you believe reading articles on this would allow you to understand the gravity of the earthquake. The noise, the moving of the ground, the fear and the after shocks. All the surrounding damage and hurt people?

    So just like one can not have a true understanding of an earthquake without living through it, one can not understand a country without speaking its language and living in it for at least a serious duration. You may disagree and that is okay.

  3. More articles here:

    http://honenu.org/

    Home
    Honenu is an Israeli Zionist legal aid organization which offers legal assistance to our people to protect and preserve their rights to receive a fair judicial process. We provide legal services to approximately 1000 arrestees a year. Soldiers and civilians who find themselves in legal entanglements due to defending themselves against Arab aggression, or due to their love for Israel, have an organization that will come to their aid 24 hours a day. In the Arab-Jewish conflict in Israel there are dozens of foreign funded organizations helping our enemies. We are there for those loyal to the Jewish people. Partner with us, champion the cause of the Jewish People in the Jewish Homeland and DONATE now.

  4. Incidentally, that’s a pro-Arab anti-Israel rag, but the interviews were genuine, if not the concern about Dawabshe where the evidence pointed to them being murdered by a rival Arab clan in the very center of an Arab village, and it being pinned on Jews by the writing of misspelled Hebrew slogans. The same family was later targeted elsewhere, clearly by Arabs.

    and now from last year

    Police dismiss claims ‘Jewish terror’ behind latest Duma arson
    Latest fire in Duma confirmed as firebombing attack, but carried out by rival clan – raising questions over previous fires.
    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/215331

    They detained Jewish minors on a fishing expedition for evidence they never found other than confession obtained under torture and without access to parents of lawyers.

    And these people live in Israel, too. Do their stories not count?

  5. Bear Klein Said:

    Nationalist camp in Israel has rights.

    I see you didn’t bother to read my substantiation, and provide none of your own. So how do you explain this:

    A Jewish minor who was picked up by Shabak for interrogations a few days ago, without seeing an attorney or his family, was rushed to hospital Friday afternoon from the Shabak facility. He is suffering from urgent medical complications.

    His family has issued a statement saying, “Now the suspicion that he was being tortured has become a certainty. We call on anyone who can do anything to help. It is a matter of life and death. They took from us a healthy child and now he is being rushed to hospital.”

    Advertisement

    The Shabak informed the family that their child was being rushed to a medical center but interrogators refused to permit his parents to meet or accompany him.

    Attorney Adi Keidar of legal aid society Honenu whose appeal to let the minor be accompanied by a parent was rejected, said that “the contempt for the right of people under interrogation has gone up a notch to a contempt for their state of health. We view very seriously the fact that despite the medical complications the intensive interrogation persists as does the refusal to permit family or an attorney to see him.”
    http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/jewish-minor-under-shabak-interrogations-rushed-to-hospital/2016/04/15/

    or

    Approximately 15 far-right settlers gathered in front of Israel’s national theater in central Tel Aviv Wednesday afternoon to stage a theatrical protest against Israeli authorities’ alleged use of terror against Jewish minors.

    Related stories
    When Israel tortures Jewish terror suspects By Noam Sheizaf | December 21, 2015
    Maybe there’s just no room for human rights in Israel By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man | December 16, 2015
    ‘Jews can’t be terrorists,’ Jewish Home MK says By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man | December 10, 2015
    The group repeatedly blindfolded one of the protesters, placed him down on a metal bed frame and mock tortured him — while he screamed and flailed — until he ultimately confessed to some unknown crime.

    Lawyers for suspects in the Duma arson, in which extremist Jews murdered three members of the Dawabshe family, have alleged that the Shin Bet is using violent and abusive interrogation methods against their clients. Authorities have been unable to gather enough evidence to try the suspects; they are all being held in administrative detention.

    The suspects were allegedly prevented from seeing a lawyer until last Wednesday, prompting a large right-wing demonstration outside the home of Shin Bet head Yoram Cohen Saturday night.

    Torture is illegal in Israel but the High Court of Justice has given state security services a green light to use it in certain cases by declaring that torturers can argue a “defense of necessity” after committing the illegal act. There is no shortage of evidence that the Shin Bet uses illegal interrogation methods even when it is not “necessary” but nobody has ever been convicted for doing so.

    Wednesday’s protesters were all young teenagers associated with the Hilltop Youth movement — settlers who build illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, and who are sometimes implicated in violence against Palestinians. The teens and young men unfurled banners that read, “Do not stand aside as your brother’s blood is shed,” and chanted “Do not torture Jews.”

    Hilltop youth settlers protest the torture of Jewish minors by the Shin Bet, central Tel Aviv, December 23, 2015. (photo: Edo Konrad)
    Hilltop youth settlers protest the torture of Jewish minors by the Shin Bet, central Tel Aviv, December 23, 2015. (photo: Edo Konrad)
    The protest managed to attract the attention of a few passersby, some of whom looked on puzzled. Others berated the young settlers for opposing the torture of Jews but not Palestinians.

    Israel has long been accused of utilizing torture against Palestinian suspects but it is almost unheard of for those interrogation tactics to be used against Jews.

    The 25-year-old organizer of the protest, Tzvi Sukkot, from the settlement of Yitzhar — known as a hotbed of radical settler activity — explained to +972 explained why he thinks state security forces should treat Jewish suspects differently than Arabs.

    “We came here to demonstrate what is happening in the Shin Bet’s torture chambers,” Sukkot told me as the group began gathering around us. “The Shin Bet has crossed all red lines. The fact that it is treating our own people more cruelly than our enemies should horrify every Jew around the world.”
    According to Sukkot, the suspects told their lawyers that the Shin Bet is hanging them upside down for extended periods of time, placing them on bed frames and stretching them in every direction, repeatedly picking them up and slamming them on the ground, and twisting their arms behind their backs after days of sleep deprivation.

    When asked whether he believes these kinds of tactics should be used against Palestinian terror suspects, Sukkot argued that “there is a difference between what is happening to our own people and what is done to the enemy. This is something every Jew should believe.”

    “What we’re seeing is not ‘Jewish terrorism.’ It is a response to Arab terrorism,” Sukkot continued, echoing the words of Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich, who recently wrote an oped arguing that only violence carried out against the Jewish people by its “enemies” can be classified as terror — not the other way around.

    When pressed about whether the murder of three members of the Dawabshe family, who were burned alive in their sleep, was not in fact a terrorist act, Sukkot began to backtrack: “I’m not well versed in the definition of terror. If harming civilians is terrorism then the Shin Bet is using terror. If one is willing to say that the Shin Bet is using terror, then what happened in Duma is also terrorism.”

    The Jewish Daily Forward published details about the identity of the suspects on Wednesday, which +972 is unable to publish here due to a sweeping gag order on the case.

  6. @ Bear Klein:
    We will have to agree to disagree. But, I will say, that when you call the government a military junta, which it isn’t, it simply doesn’t take that form anymore, you empower those in the West who want to put sanctions on Egypt, weakening Sisi and making more likely a return to power of the Muslim Brotherhood or a realigning with our enemies like Iran. Russia is not Islamist, it’s not unthinkable for Egypt given the dictates of realpolitik. That’s why Trump had to go there and publicly reassure him, just now.

  7. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Elections do not make for democracy and the Nationalist camp in Israel has rights.
    Living someplace and being informed is far more valuable than being a virtual tourist. No matter how much one undertakes virtually.

  8. @ Bear Klein:
    Moreover, there isn’t anybody who you or I know, and yes, I know people from Egypt too who hate Sisi and are not Islamists, who has said anything yet that isn’t in print somewhere, so that’s a non-argument.

    The question was whether it is a military dictatorship. It isn’t. A “democracy” can be repressive to. It just means majority rule through elections and the rule of law. That was the basis on which even McCAin called for sanctions on Sisi’s military government and supported Morsi’s elected dictatorship. But, then Sisi was elected. Now, it’s a democracy.

    It doesn’t have to have a bill of rights or guarantee the rights of minorities even to be a democracy. Most of the democratic republics in history did no such thing, including the US, for most of its history in practice.

  9. @ Bear Klein:
    No, it’s not ruled by a junta. Yes, it’s repressive. Criticism and satire are not tolerated. But, it is an elected government based on the rule of law and there are more rights for women and minorities than under Morsi or Mubarak, for that matter.

    Yes, Israel is comparatively civil rights heaven, in general, but this is war, and the national camp that is fighting for Israel’s survival has no civil rights. They are living under brutal military occupation. Jews being being persecuted by the Jewish state that turns the other cheek to antisemitic terrorists turns my stomach.

  10. I meant to say liberals won’t draw attention to it because they approve of torturing even children in the national camp or don’t care, or they will tell you they don’t believe it, that it’s propaganda, which is what they even said to me when I said that Abbas wouldn’t stop paying terrorists. Paying terrorists? How do I know this? But, there’s a bill in Congress about it. All Republican propaganda. Liberals. Ha! Why aren’t prominent “progressives” being questioned about the torture and detention of youth in the National Camp by more than one intelligence service with the blessing of the “liberal” court?

  11. @ Bear Klein:
    Of course, for most people in Israel, human rights are unequaled just about anywhere. But, most people are not in the National camp.

    Conservatives won’t draw attention to it because they don’t want to make Israel look bad, liberals won’t draw attention to it because they don’t approve or don’t care.

    And, you can learn a lot more about a country by informed reading, including reading what a cross-section of people in that country write, than just by living or visiting there, which is often just a case of the the three blind men and the elephant. Countries are big places and most people only see a fraction of their own countries, or cities and towns, even.. In fact, most people are more curious about exploring foreign places. Got a question? Ask a tourist. You’ll probably get a more informed answer.

    I remember a teacher in high school who posed the problem, that has been tackled in literature, of a town that secures rights for everybody else but persecutes one person who is chosen by lottery. Is this a town that respects human rights?

  12. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    And, needless to say, I have no problem with the Sheriff Trump is being lambasted for pardoning. Or HIroshima, Sherman’s burning his way across the South , the Fire bombing of Dresden, or the bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia.
    I remember being irritated with Bush for not just wiping Feluja off the map.
    “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

    William Tecumsah Sherman

    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

  13. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    I believe you are sincere in your postings and readings. Reading about a foreign country and living there are two radically different experiences.

    Having had Egyptian associates I can assure human rights in Israel are at a very high standard and comparison to Egypt is flawed. No where else in the middle east are they remotely close. That does not mean there have not been isolated cases in which things were wrong or need questioning. Then that is true even in the USA. We all need to strive to be better.

    Yamit’s description of Egypt was accurate.

  14. @ yamit82:
    I agree waiting for Iranians to stop their nuke program is wishful thinking. It needs to be destroyed militarily if that is still feasible.

  15. @ Bear Klein:
    Lest you think I am slandering Israel, I am not necessarily opposed to torture and, with Orwell, I observe that Democracy is a fluid, largely undefinable concept. I am an unabashedly partisan pragmatist (I think people should be up-front about their biases and not pretend impartiality, when there is rarely any such a thing ( a left-over from my Leftist past, I suppose, and one of the reasons I tend to wax autobiographical at times). I do not regard Sisi’s (or Putin’s or China’s — which nobody talks about — ) torture of Islamists and their allies as a problem for democracy or human rights, nor do I regard torturing the likes of Rasmeah Odeah, a problem. I had no problem with US soldiers torturing Baathists in Iraq during the war. I do regard the torturing and detention of the Hilltop Youth and the banning of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount as a major human rights issue and I am not willing to let it pass in silence.

    The genius of American democracy is that it rests, not on the illusion of aan impartially just authority, but on competing partisan interests.

  16. @ Bear Klein:

    Even secular Iranians who are nationalist still have regional hegemonic ambitions. Polls I have seen show a majority of Iranians support the Nuke ambitions of the Mullahs…… I don’t see any realistic faction in Iran prepared to renounce their nuke program or regional ambitions……. Why would they? It’s status, it’s power and pride. The Iranian people have suffered much to rach nuke parity of sorts….. Threatening a neighbor or Israel is another matter but remember regimes can be changed those unfavorable to those more favorable and back to those unfavorable but the nukes remain and all intellectual property and know-how as well…… Once the genie is out in the wild it cannot be put back….. Israel must destroy the whole program before it is final or learn to live with their bomb and threat. It will neutralize our Nuke deterrence and put us under conventional threat from all our enemies together a threat we cannot match. .

  17. @ Bear Klein:
    The French parliament also gave Petain and Lavalle emergency dictatorial powers prior to the German invasion, which is one reason why LePen’s claim that France was not responsible for the French collaboration in the
    Shoah was only due to the German occupation and not the responsibility of France, in addition to the fact that many French police and other collaborators took and active role.

    The Congress voted 569–80 (with 18 abstentions) to grant the Cabinet the authority to draw up a new constitution, effectively “voting the Third Republic out of existence”.[47] Nearly all French historians, as well as all postwar French governments, consider this vote to be illegal; not only were several deputies and senators not present, but the constitution explicitly stated that the republican form of government could not be changed. On the next day, Pétain formally assumed near-absolute powers as “Head of State.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain

  18. @ Bear Klein:
    Also Sisi is not personally responsible for all of the human rights abuses, some of which are built into earlier laws, like the 1982 laws on blasphemy and insulting religion under which Atheists and Christians have been disproprotionately targeted. See

    https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/blasphemy-cases-rise-egypt-and-christians-bear-brunt

    democracies can also abuse human rights.

    In France, it’s a crime to slander the President.

    What to do, when the populace is undemocratic like Egypt and Iran under the Shah.

    https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/blasphemy-cases-rise-egypt-and-christians-bear-brunt

    Mossadegh,who Clinton apologized for our overthrowing on his disastrous apology tour, one of the things that led to 911, was no democrat except in the Socialist sense. He had been granted emergency dictatorial powers by the Parliament. Sound familiar? . I’m not comparing him to Hitler except to say that that is how Hitler became dictator after the Reichstag fire.

    More popular than ever, a greatly strengthened Mosaddegh convinced parliament to grant him emergency powers for six months to “decree any law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms”.[

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

    What were the emergency powers in Germany?
    The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) was a 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
    Enabling Act of 1933 – Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

  19. @ Bear Klein:

    Egypt is not a military dictatorship. He was elected. Sisi mostly suppresses the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel only suppresses the National Camp. In both cases, children are arrested and tortured. In Israel, it’s only Jewish children in the National camp, such as the hilltop youth who are arrested, interrogated under torture without presence of attorney or parents and detained indefinitely without evidence or charges. The Supreme Court has allowed this. See articles I enclosed links to.

    I’m not sure if they torture Arab terror suspects anymore. I think the Court outlawed it. Rasmeah Odeah claimed that she only confessed under torture, which is why Jewish-American liberals are willing to give her a pass even though she was convicted of murder.

    Sisi has also undertaken measures to protect the rights of women, with limited effectiveness, because he is more liberal than the society he runs. He has banned criticism of the government, but while some of it seems to be criticism of corruption, most of it seems to be criticism of suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Here’s so-called
    Human Rights Watch” report
    https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/egypt

    and the Wikipedia article on Sisi
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Fattah_el-Sisi

    LIberal Jews object to our enemies being tortured. Patriotic Jews object to patriots being tortured.

  20. @ yamit82: You asked: Why does anyone believe that a regime change will change Iran’s global and nuke ambitions?

    You would be correct for the people who are allowed to run for office in Iran. They are not really an opposition they are just a different group of Islamists.

    If the people who who Obama did not back, who are friendly to the west were to take over and are not Islamists Iran would be way different. They would end up having normal relations with the USA, EU, and even Israel. They would not be a threat. However, at this point the Ayatollahs and Shia Islamists are in solid control.

    Empowering a real opposition to take over, short of war with Iran is the way to stop the designs these people have on the middle east and world.

  21. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Really do you actually believe human rights in Israel or Egypt are remotely similar? Or are you just passing the time the posting a couple of articles?

    Yes without commenting on the specific posts Israel is not perfect and can improve. In all sincererity the comparision of Israel and Egypt in the area of human rights and freedoms is naiive and vile.

  22. @ Bear Klein:

    Why does anyone believe that a regime change will change Iran’s global and nuke ambitions? Even the main opposition in Iran began development of their nuke program and the only differences were mainly social not ideologically political with regards to Globalist ambitions.

  23. @ Sebastien Zorn:

    Egypt is a military dictatorship ruled by a Junta … Sisi answers to the military not the people….. He has 2 missions to control the brotherhood and other insurgents attacking vital civilian and military installations like the electric grid every day, providing work and cheap subsidized basic commodities for growing young population over a million additions per year and above all protecting Egyptian industries and businesses owned by the military and providing pensions and perks to retired military officers. That amts to about 70% of the economy. The threat and challenge to Sissi is the economy if he fails sooner than later he will be out on his ass and he knows it……. There is no economic solution to Egypt’s bottomless pit at around 100 million population in 10 years it can be 120 million. They can’t feed themselves 70% of food stuffs are imported and they depend on Saudi billions to keep them afloat…. the brotherhood will topple them or they will go to war and if the latter guess who they will go to war against?

  24. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Sisi is good for Egypt (stability & controlling Islamists) and Israel as he is rational and pragmatic. Sisi however has NOT restored civil rights in a democratic fashion to Egypt. He is trying to protect the Copts (not always successful) and perhaps there is more limited freedom then as under an Islamic regime but trust me Egypt has no functioning Bill of Rights.

  25. @ yamit82:
    But, didn’t he topple the Muslim Brotherhood on the waves of massive protests against the Muslim Brotherhood, and then wasn’t he elected? Hasn’t he suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, restored those civil rights that the Muslim Brotherhood had taken away and promoted moderate Islam? (While still, it is to be admitted, he is part of the general Arab diplomatic war to make Israel withdraw from Judea and Samaria which is less fervent — they are only demanding freezing Jewish settlement now — but still in place ever since Sadat, but that’s another issue, I’m not going so far as to call him a real friend.)

  26. @ yamit82:
    Sorry old mate even the Irish paddies little bit part players at capitalism do that…the corporations rule the Irish paddy gombeen capitalists so that is no definition at all…Fascism happens when they come for the local women housewife cookery group…fascism bodes NO oppositional voice…well that is closer definition

  27. Trump is better than Obama at this point in time based on:

    The State Department refused to endorse a two state solution

    No 1967 lines being imposed, no demand to have a building freeze in Judea/Samaria or Jerusalem. Trump team says sides have to negotiate directly and come to an agreement. Trump will not impose one. So this gives Israel a moderately free hand to build and not give anything up.
    A major improvement from Obama. If Abbas pushes Trump to hard in demands and keeps paying terrorists, Israel may get a free to rapid expansion, maybe annexation of the blocks or more. Trump may then move the embassy but on this given his current team I am not completely sold.

    Trump is not going to fight for Israel in Syria, Lebanon or elsewhere in middle east. So the Russia- USA ceasefire left Russia keeping their bases in Syria and their influence. USA limiting their current involvement to getting rid of ISIS in Raqqa.

    The UN under Haley/Trump is a major improvement over Obama.

    Trump is learning on the job and his whole anti Islamist team is gone. He does not seem to have a solid strategic vision for what he wants. Is he going to try and curtail Iran spreading? Beyond the Kurds and some Syrian Sunnis trying to secure the land near the Kurdish areas Trump does not have an allies on the ground. Are the gulf states going to send troops beyond their borders or the Egyptians? Unlikely. So who on the ground is going to stop Iran and their Shia allies from spreading further? Iran hits soft spots (Yemen, Syria, Iraq, parts of Afganistan). Will they be allowed to go into Bahrain, Eastern Saudi Arabia?

  28. @ yamit82:
    Iran with the help of Russia do not forget expanded its influence. Will they continue to try and expand that influence certainly.

    Will they succeed we do not yet know. If they expand too rapidly they can still be taken down before they go nuclear or certainly curtailed to the current situation.

  29. Is not another indication of Trump’s support for Israel, contained in the Arutz 7 headline that “Israel has conceded enough”, and the report goes on to say that Jared Kushner declared that the “Palestinians, on the contrary had not only not reciprocated but had placed barriers in the way.. Paraphrasing of course, but this is what Netanyahu himself should have told the Arabim years ago, with or without U.S. approval. After all, there ARE occasions when we should SHOW that we are indeed a Sovereign State.

    Just think of all the many years wasted on mouthy frothings, and the precious lives lost, and the potential Aliyah discouraged…….

    Of course as regards the billions spent on Aliyah, I go back to my mantra that none would be neccessary if we clamped down on the 40,000 abortions a year and made them allowable only due to “need”, not “want”., far more than any Aliyah, except when there was a mass immigration from Russia, -and Ethiopia which was more of a rescue mission..

  30. @ Bear Klein:

    I agree….. Don’t think that Jordan will evade Iranian designs for long once they solidify their control of the Islamic Shia crescent. Once Iran goes Nuclear they will have stalemated and check mated Israeli strategic advantage. Trump has shown he is no better than Obama maybe even worse.

  31. @ Ted Belman:

    Ted why do you believe it’s an imperative to solve the Jordan problem? We can outlast the Arabs even if it takes another 500 years… The little King may not be anyone’s idea of a friend but we do have common interests and do cooperate… They are going to buy our gas and that gives us a degree of leverage. less than 10 years ago BB was ready with the agreement of the IDF and Shabak to give Assad almost all he demanded for a piece of paper and promise of Israelis driving to Turkey thru Syria and eating Humus in the Damascus casaba…. Think where we would be today if stupid BB and even more stupid IDF had agreed???? Peace should never be our national aim….. There will never be Peace. Any government in what we call Jordan can be overthrown internally or externally nullifying any expectations you place with Muldar even if it were possible and practical. In the ME only the most brutal and radical elements take and hold power. Trump has allowed the Iranians to get the bomb and extend their hegemony from Iran to Lebanon Jordan will fall to Iranian pressure or align with Iran against us… the Sunni- Shia conflict will be put aside to save power and that regime in any case will be aligned against us. i see no reason to allow Hamas the likely ruler of Jordan after the King and family deposed to inherit a well trained and equipped modern army on our Eastern border and that will happen.

    A government other than the current King can be taken over by force by IRAN OR EVEN THE Russians. My instinct and advice is to let facts on the ground dictate our policy and how we should react without long term grand strategies that are always doomed to failure, and end up with Israel paying a grievous price for bad ideas and even worse policies based on those ideas or hopes. Hopes do not make good diplomacy.

  32. Since the Islamic State in Syria & Iraq is in its final stages of existence I believe the Monarch in Jordan is no danger of being overthrown anywhere in the near future.

    The USA has no motivation to push out the King. The King is good standing with the Gulf Arab States and Egypt and the USA government.

  33. It behoves Yamit to learn something about Fascism…he never could grasp what it was and is.

    In fact I see it coming now in America but not from Trump who I still support for the key reason of nation.

    FASCISM IN AMERICA IS BUILDING FROM CNN AND ALSO FROM THE HITLERITE COMMUNIST HATING ALEX JONES…Situation in America becoming very unstable. Centres on the use being made of Antifa, Black Lives Matter and KKK all provocateurs (not real in pay of state forces)

    I feel Jews are very vulnerable and many of their positions come from their fear.

    But there is NO Marxist leadership…no party to bring the traditions and teachings of Trotsky into the situation and that is very badly needed

    Alex Jones is going all out now to create a bloodbath of socialists (although there is no Marxist Party at all in America at present there is a strong working class) in America somewhat along the lines of what Pinochet did in Chile. But not Antifa who are really agents provocateurs. Jones aims at the working class and socialist revolution.

    Jones is the new McCarthy. Jones is a Hitler and a Mussolini all rolled into one. Jones is a massive danger to the American working class, the American ordinary people.

    Moreover as I have shown Jones has links to Antisemitism.

    Round about 10.39 on this video Jones is very, very like Hitler in the Hitlerian speeches.

    The fairly astute and accurate Roger Stone is now lying on his belly in front of Jones simply because Jones has built a big voice in Infowars fuelled by an internet market of his “natural” products. I do know that Hitler also was financed by very big forces inside of Germany and we do not know yet what is the real source of the Jones empire.

    This is sure and certain. Jones is very definitely following the same kind of propaganda against communism that Hitler did in his Mein Kamph and in all of his wars. Jews were also swept up in that maelstorm.

    The war of the Media, all of them except a couple of minor sources, is also on the road to Fascism. This all ties itself down to the Media, Obama and Clinton, NOT ACEPTING the democratic vote.

    Not being prepared to honour the time related tradition since the state was founded to abide by election result this has opened the door to Jones.

    The Civil War is there and is undeniable. The decision of the Media and a very big section of the American state not to accept the vote that placed Donald Trump as President IS the Civil War. That IS the move towards Fascist forms of rule right there.

    Jones though has his OWN Fascist agenda. (This is what is hard to grasp and what makes the situation quite complex) Jones seeks in everything he is doing to place the blame for all of this onto what he continually refers to as “The Communists”, “Communism” or sometimes “Chinese Communism”

    So without any doubt Jones has his own agenda. That is Civil War like in Chile where the army and fascists (on the streets) will engage in violence against “communism”.

    The drive in America towards Fascism seems to me to be coming in let’s say two waves. The old class represented by Obama, McCain, the Clintons, all of Congress and the Senate. the second wave from Jones the Hitlerian figure in his war on “communism”. Jones is not the only one either. There are others but not Trump.

    These groups like the KKK, Antifa, Black Lives Matter are entities which have no relation with the working class or with the Black people in America.

    They are groups originating and sustained by the above.

    Jones lies. They are not socialist and not communist. Yes this is the 100 years anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But Antifa and the likes are the Black Hundreds not the Bolsheviks.

    Jones now with his fake modesty is really projecting more like the chieftain of a savage tribe, a real demogogue.

    The video here is really very frightening indeed. The Fascists around CNN are really now a law unto themselves. They really are Fascists. Firmly on the road to Fascism.

    They certainly must be stopped by each and every means. But I fear the politics of Jones very much.

    In a real way Jones and it is remarkable how these people like Stone grovel at his feet is also Fascist. A very big danger.

    Against all of this the American working class has a proud and long history. This proud history needs to be expressed in building a true Trotskyist party of which there is today in America complete absence.

    I do not have time to transcribe at this point the messianic Hitlerism of Jones but it is in this video where he has Stone grovelling at the feet of this essential nonentity.
    https://youtu.be/YynrjB0Bah0

    As regards Jordan I am cautious. I would as a tactical measure defend the King. Any change inthat status quo in these terribly unstable conditions could be most dangerous.

  34. If the US has a President who wants to implement it, it could happen. But, as long as the Supreme Court has the power to over-ride any law passed by the Knesset, no plan based in Israel that doesn’t involve relinquishing Israeli land and sovereignty will be allowed to get off the ground, as we have seen, repeatedly. Justice Minister Shaked has placed herself at ground zero of the only place any positive change can take place. Her role is more important than that of Prime MInister for any activist in the national camp. A Prime Minister won’t be allowed to do much more than give away the store incrementally, as things stand. As things stand, the Ultimate Alternate Solution is actually the most realistic option; unlike leadership in Israel, US Presidencies change hands frequently. If Trump doesn’t do it, there may be other opportunities in not too many years, but as long as the Court is in charge, and the Knesset lets it be in charge, there will only be piecemeal incremental victories and losses in Israel, itself. Any other changes will a response to unforeseeable external events.

  35. @ yamit82:
    Yes, that’s how the other article put it, but it isn’t that just a poetic way of saying more influence? Apart from potentially influencing public opinion, what actual power does any newspaper editor have?

  36. @ Ted Belman:

    There is NO Jordan option and you are still whistling past a graveyard. Even if there were a real Jordan option does Israel really want it? I don’t… they would place Israel in even a more dangerous and precarious position than what we have today. Today Jordan is no friend or ally but not a serious enemy. I can live with that…. You want a Hamas controlled Jordan that’s unacceptable.

  37. Oftentimes the real negotiations go on under the radar while countries put on an act in public.

    It may be that that is happening with respect to the Jordan Option.

  38. Face value it is hard to maintain optimism, then again President Trump is a master at power games.
    While a bit disconcerted, I prefer to hold pattern for a while.
    About his relationship with the so called American Jews… What do they expect? They are solid allies of the Obamatoids and voted in block for la Clinton…
    There was once a Secretary of State who said… You all know what he said.
    Again. Under a shadow of doubt I still hope for good things to come.

  39. Bannon’s leaving is not only good because he will have more influence on the outside, but because it robs the Left of an important Trump bashing image provided by SNL, namely that of Bannon as Darth Vader. The image is Darth Vader, but not the substance of the message, since in Star Wars, Darth Vader was just the vassal of the evil emperor. The substance of the image is really Iago or Rasputin. Remember how SNL destroyed Sarah Palin with “I can see Russia from my house.” He has made this image dated.

    Now, he has Kelly whom the Left has no problem with. It throws a monkey wrench in the Alinskyite strategy of locking on and demonizing an opponent. Trump did this repeatedly during the election as well. He keeps changing the paradigm by changing staff so he can’t be pinned down and effectively targeted. The Left is very top down. They scatter in confusion and are easily distracted by other things when their leadership becomes unfocused and confused.

    It’s all about public opinion and psychological warfare through continual paradigm shifting*. This is the most sophisticated battle we have seen since Reagan, and Reagan had less to contend with.

    I really don’t think we have seen anything like it since Lincoln.

    [*concept introduced by Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”]

  40. In fact, I wonder if he backed the sanctions against Russia, despite publicly acknowledging earlier that it was all trumped-up nonsense, because he can offer removing them in both the U.S. and in the UN, as a bargaining chip.

    Also, stopping the carnage in Syria has the added effect of removing the justification for the pressure to admit Muslim “refugees.” It then becomes possible to change the tenor of the debate to returning them to their homes.

  41. I believe that Trump is playing a very long-range game in order to make an end-run around his enemies in order to avoid going the way of JFK. It’s those 17 intelligence agencies again. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” seems to be the watchword. No accident or coincidence that the Progressive media, including the theater world, has been constantly speculating about assassination, trying to make it publicly palatable, acceptable. Even before he won the primary, I talked with one guy who said he would never vote for him because he believed he would be assassinated. There is a real danger, here. I believe he is taking one step forward and two steps back, as Lenin put it. It’s only been 8 months, and look at all the damage Obama did in 8 years he’s done to reverse.

    Even Syria may be a re-positioning. We have been backing a losing side for a while now, and a lot of them are also terrorists. Maybe he will try something on the diplomatic side with Russia as commentators have been advocating we do with China regarding N. Korea, not that it would work this time. It’s about the defensive missiles we put in place which China also objects to, even to the point of threatening a cultural boycott of Korean Dramas and Pop music, for which there is a big audience in China. There was a Variety article about that a while back.

    But, maybe something can be worked out with Russia. Israel did get Russia to take over from Iran, in one sensitive strip.

    Maybe Russia can rein in Iran. Russia is worried about terrorism. All to be negotiated.

  42. Unfortunately, Trump has permitted his enemies to take over the Department of Justice and has refused to “drain the swamp” of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and his other corrupt enemies who are bent on removing him. He could have had them prosecuted from day 1 of his administration, but refused. He has not assembled a minimally adequate defense team to defend himself against Mueller’s prosecution of him. He has failed to reveal Mueller’s corruption, which would enable him to fire him (Mueller). This together with the constant incitement of his assassination by the Democrats , the media and “celebrities,” ensures that he will be either politically destroyed or physically eliminated very soon. He seems to have a death wish.