T. Belman. Trump is not laying the groundwork for an “Israeli-PA peace plan”. He is laying the groundwork for an Israel-Palestinian peace plan. The PA has no say in the matter. If Mudar Zahran comes to power in Jordan, he will be the leader of the majority of Palestians or certainly more Palestinians than reside in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

Israeli Arab-affairs analyst Shimrit Meir on Sunday tweeted that the Trump administration is considering cutting aid to Jordan should it fail to support the political part of the “deal of the century” which should be presented after the September 17 Israeli elections.

Citing a Wall Street Journal report (Trump Peace Effort Traps Jordan Between U.S. and Palestinians) saying that as the Trump administration lays the groundwork for an Israel-PA peace plan, neighboring Jordan has been thrust into an awkward position, having to oppose Trump’s suggestions while depending on Washington’s support, Meir notes that the very idea shatters the sanctum sanctorum of the US Middle Eastern policy across generations.

According to Meir, in Israel, too, the Netanyahu security apparatus, which has been traditionally attentive to the Jordanian king’s needs since Golda met Abdullah I, are shocked by the notion of cutting off Jordan, and could possibly attempt to block such a move, Trump or no Trump.
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By Amil Imani, CAPITAL HILL OUTSIDER

Actually, it is even more enlightening to go back to the day before Israel was attacked in 1973 – the day Kissinger prevented Israel from launching a preemptive strike.

BY Moshe Phillips, JPOST

The news that a prominent American Jewish organization has invited Henry Kissinger to be the featured speaker at its upcoming conference is deeply troubling. Kissinger’s long record of undermining Israel and Soviet Jewry should disqualify him from the honor of appearing at Jewish communal events.

Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2006, pp. 71-78

by Kenneth W. Stein

The December 1975 memorandum of conversation between U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Iraqi foreign minister Sa’dun Hammadi reflects deep U.S.-Iraqi tensions at a time when Baghdad was widely considered the most radical Arab capital. It also reveals Kissinger’s effort to soften Baghdad’s hard-line views toward Washington.

Bilateral tension was entrenched. Before 1958, Iraq had been part of the U.S.-sponsored Baghdad pact, an anti-Soviet alliance, but Iraq’s 1958 Republican Revolution deeply changed the Iraqi policy. General Abd al-Karim Qassam shifted Baghdad’s friendship toward Moscow, not Washington, and Iraqi-U.S. relations deteriorated when, in 1961, the United States recognized Kuwait, over whose territory Iraq had laid claim. In the aftermath of the June 1967 Six-Day war, Baghdad severed diplomatic relations with Washington. Bilateral relations worsened as Baghdad increased its ties with Moscow and Washington solidified links to Tehran. The Iraqi government’s decision to participate in the 1973 Yom Kippur war and U.S. military assistance to rebellious Iraqi Kurds soured relations further.
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Podcast: Trump’s Fourth and Biden vs. Harris

• BY JOHN PODHORETZ

T. Belman. Many decades ago, Commentary Mag posted an article by Berlinski in which he “proved” that Darwin was wrong. It caused a huge stir and a deluge of comments from many of the experts which necessitated publication over the next three issues. It was so much fun to follow.

Unfortunately his comments regarding Islam and antisemitism expressed at the end of the discussion were off putting.

Is Charles Darwin’s theory fundamentally deficient? David Berlinski makes his case, noting that most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged. Where there should be evolution, there is stasis. So, was Darwin wrong?

David Berlinski is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a contributing editor at Inference: International Review of Science, and author of many books. Berlinski discusses his book The Deniable Darwin and lays out how Charles Darwin has failed to explain the origin of species through his theory of evolution.
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CRITICISM OF TRUMP BY UK AMBASSADOR TO THE US, DARROCH ,[AS FEATURED IN THE NY TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, etc. ] TURNED OUT TO BE INTENTIONALLY PLANTED FALSE NEWS

Many “criticisms”  that were reported in the media as being made by Ambassador  Darroch were not from the ambassador himself, but came from “anonymous sources” as quoted in  news outlets  such as The Washington Post and New York Times. The claims that Darroch  had called President Trump “chaotic” and “incoherent” are also false, according to a source familiar with the  actual memos.Media pundits in London and Washington see the surfacing of the unusual release of secret memos as a political hit aimed at Darroch.

Darroch’s championing of Trump has earned him critics in Whitehall, many of whom would like to see him dislodged from his post. Selective use of the material makes it appear Darroch is opposed to the president when he is not.

By John Gizzi, NEWSMAX

Since Donald Trump was elected President in November of 2016, he has had a powerful booster in the dean of Washington’s diplomatic corps, Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s ambassador to the United States.

That support came into question this past weekend by a Daily Mail report citing a series of cables and memos critical of the President and sent to the British Foreign Office by Darroch.
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By Alexander G. Markovsky, AMERICAN THINKER

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and socialism.

The leader of the White opposition, the distinguished admiral Alexander Kolchak, was defeated on the battlefield, betrayed by the Allies and captured by the Bolsheviks.

During the interrogation, the Bolsheviks, astounded by their own victory, were trying to understand how they could defeat the well-supplied regular army, led by experienced military commanders.

“Admiral, why didn’t you promise land to peasants? You could have won this war,” the interrogators asked (Russia was an agrarian country and the ownership of land was one of the most compelling issues of the revolution). “I would not promise what I could not deliver” was the admiral’s response.

The interrogators just smiled. They did promise the land and won.
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By Michael Sokolove,  NYT

Photo illustration by Joan Wong

One spring afternoon last year, protesters gathered on a sidewalk alongside a busy street in Cambridge, Mass. City buses rolled past. Car horns sounded. A few pedestrians paused briefly before continuing on their way. The location was 77 Massachusetts Avenue, in front of a limestone-and-concrete edifice that serves as the gateway into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The building’s lobby leads to a long hallway known as the Infinite Corridor and into the heart of one of America’s most vaunted academic institutions.

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, would be visiting the next day. The protesters, a mix of students and local peace activists, wanted his invitation revoked. They were opposed to the prince being welcomed as an honored dignitary and were calling attention to the Saudi state’s financial ties to M.I.T. — and to at least 62 other American universities — at a time when the regime’s bombing of civilians in a war in neighboring Yemen and its crackdown on domestic dissidents were being condemned by human rights activists.
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The Founders’ principles can help revitalize liberal democracy world-wide.

By Michael R. Pompeo, WSJ

Yet after the Cold War ended, many human-rights advocates turned their energy to new categories of rights. These rights often sound noble and just. But when politicians and bureaucrats create new rights, they blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments. Unalienable rights are by nature universal. Not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right. Loose talk of “rights” unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.

That’s why I’m launching a Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department, chaired by Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon and populated with scholars, legal experts and activists. The commission’s mission isn’t to discover new principles but to ground our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.

The commission is an advisory body and won’t opine on policy. My hope is that its work will generate a serious debate about human rights that extends across party lines and national borders, similar to the debate sparked by the human-rights panel Eleanor Roosevelt convened in 1947. The Commission on Unalienable Rights will study the document that resulted from that effort, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, along with our founding documents and other important works.
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By Evelyn Gordon, jns

Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights.

Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying.

It’s not that these groups have anything against Jews per se. They simply feared that hosting a Jew would make them a target for anti-Israel protesters.
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by Linda Goudsmit, PUNDICITY

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

War makes strange bedfellows, and the current Leftist/Islamist alliance against America-first President Donald Trump is worth examining.

Islamic sharia law with its misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, pedophilia, female genital mutilation, and wife beating is diametrically opposed to leftist Democrats’ proclaimed principles of women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, children’s rights, and anti-bullying. How can Leftists partner with Islamists whose norms are diametrically opposed to their own stated principles?
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Is forced diversity in Hollywood hurting or helping the entertainment industry? The Blaze TV host and “Roaming Millennial” Lauren Chen sits down with Candace Owens to discuss why the Right is actually the side of inclusivity, and why diversity of thought is so critical.

The interviewer is Lauren Chen, a Canadian, who grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in the US. And get this, she is only 25 years old. She is very smart and articulate. Follow her closely. A rising star.

Candace Owens recently interviewed her for an hour.

Are Trump’s plans for Palestine an “orchestrated exercise in futility”?

by JOHN C. WOHLSTETTER, AMERICAN SPECTATOR

July 2, 2019, 12:10 AM

Having reshaped the Arab-Israeli conflict by moving our embassy to Jerusalem, slashing aid to the Palestinians, and annexing the Golan Heights, Team Trump floats an economic plan for the Palestinians that is anchored firmly in the obsolete Oslo “land for peace” formula.

But a Jewish World Review article from a top Middle East journalist says this is a feint and that Team Trump is working on a deal with Russia on managing Middle East conflicts under which the Palestinians will be bypassed. The author, Zev Chafets, who handled press matters for Israeli Prime Minister (1977-1983) Menachem Begin and was an active participant in the Camp David “peace process” negotiations, writes that the Bahrain conference is an “orchestrated exercise in futility” that masks the real Trump agenda: a Middle East rapprochement with Russia that will accommodate common geostrategic regional interests and help stabilize the endemically unstable Mideast.
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