COLUMN ONE: POLICY SPEECHES VS POLICY  

McMaster’s speech was notable because in it he laid out a host of policies that McMaster himself has reportedly opposed since he was appointed to his position in February.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

McMaster

President Donald Trump is scheduled to release a new US national security strategy on Monday.

This past Tuesday Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster gave a speech laying out some of its components in a speech in Washington.

McMaster’s speech was notable because in it he laid out a host of policies that McMaster himself has reportedly opposed since he was appointed to his position in February.
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December 15, 2017 | 10:14 am | Comments »

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INTO THE FRAY: A Palestinian State? What could possibly go wrong?    

By MARTIN SHERMAN

There is precious little reason to believe that any Palestinian state established in areas evacuated by Israel would not swiftly degenerate into a mega-Gaza overlooking greater Tel Aviv.

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single rocket. Nor will there be any ... – Yitzhak Rabin, Radio interview, July 24, 1995.  

In the history of international politics, there have been numerous ideas that proved both myopic and moronic. But few—if any—have proved more so than the ill-conceived idea of foisting statehood on the Palestinian-Arabs. Compounding the folly of this fatal fiasco is the fact that it was not only completely predictable—but persistently predicted.
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December 15, 2017 | 2:27 am | 5 Comments »

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Interfaith events with Muslims only serve to lower your guard and should be avoided.  

MEMRI

Following ‘Interfaith Gathering Of Unity’ At Islamic Center Of Jersey City, New Jersey, Center’s Imam, In Sermons, Accuses Jews Of Carrying Out Sinai Mosque Massacre, Prays To Be Martyred At ‘Al-Aqsa Mosque, Which Is Under The Feet Of The Apes And Pigs’

On November 12, 2017, the Islamic Center of Jersey City hosted the “Interfaith Gathering of Unity 2017,” sponsored by the Hudson Country Brotherhood/Sisterhood Association, which identifies itself as “an interfaith body for understanding and mutual support.” The event was billed as “an Interfaith Gathering of Unity for Hudson County’s diverse religious groups including Baha’i, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh communities.”

It should be noted that the Islamic Center of New Jersey works with government agencies involved in counterterrorism and has in the past worked with the U.S. military.
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December 15, 2017 | 1:49 am | Comments »

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Caddell: Establishment Elites ‘Want to Manage the Decline of America,’ But American People ‘Rage Against the Dying of the Light’  

By Robert Craychik, BREITBART

Americans are rejecting an offer of managed American decline from the political class, said veteran pollster Pat Caddell on Wednesday’s edition of Breitbart News Tonight on SiriusXM.

Drawing on Dylan Thomas’s 1947 poem, Caddell waxed poetic during a discussion with SiriusXM host and Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon.

“They will not go gently into that good night of decline,” said Caddell. “The American people will rage against the dying of the light, and that is the moment that we are continuing toward.”

The narrative of American decline — commensurate with relative ascendancies from global competitors among the world’s emerging economies – is often frame by progressive elites as both an inevitable and desirable trajectory.
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December 14, 2017 | 4:24 pm | 3 Comments »

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ANALYSIS: Islamic Summit on Jerusalem showcases new Mid East Alliances  

The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates did not attend the emergency meeting, sending a message that they would not be standing shoulder to shoulder with Iran.

JORDAN CHOSE THE SIDE OF IRAN FURTHER ESTRANGING IT FROM THE SAUDIS AND AMERICANS

By Jonathan Franzman, JPOST

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called in Istanbul on Wednesday for unity among Muslim nations in opposing US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, the attendees at the emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation were not unified. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates did not attend, sending a message that they would not be standing shoulder to shoulder with Iran.

Eighteen heads of state attended the meeting, including those of Azerbaijan, Qatar, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan. In addition the prime ministers of Malaysia and Pakistan came to Istanbul. Leaders of several weak and failed states, such as Yemen, Somalia and Libya, showed up as well.
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December 14, 2017 | 3:14 pm | 1 Comment »

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India, China and Russia Refrain From Recognizing East Jerusalem as Capital of Palestine in Joint Statement  

By Ben Cohen, ALGEMEINER

Foreign ministers from India, Russia and China notably refrained from recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine at their annual meeting in New Delhi this week – seven days after the US recognized the holy city as the capital of Israel.

The decision not to restate the position on Jerusalem long-held by all three countries was in marked contrast to their joint call at last year’s meeting in Moscow for a “sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” At this year’s 15th annual meeting, their statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stressed support for “an independent, viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders,” without mentioning the issue of Jerusalem.
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December 14, 2017 | 10:14 am | 3 Comments »

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Trump, Jerusalem, Arabs, Muslims  

T. Belman. Why Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem is such a big deal. True the State Department still won’t acknowledge that Jerusalem is in Israel. We must ask, Why not? Because according to Muslims, Jerusalem is a Muslim city. For that matter all Jewish patriarcs going back to Adam are Muslim even though Islam wasn’t founded until the seventh century. UNESCO apparantly, agrees with the Muslims. At the Islamic Summent recently convened in Istanbal, this message is repeated again and again.

So, while we may believe that at least west Jerusalem is in Israel, the Muslims do not concede the point. They want it all. That’s why they are so upset with Trump. He rejected their narrative on Jerusalem. Perhaps he will reject their narrative in its entirety. Yet the State Dept won’t take sides on the issue. When the Supreme Court refused to order the State Department to issue a passport to an American kid who was born in Jerusalem, it held so on the grounds that this was an executive decision. So the question raises the issue, who formulates foreign policy, the President or the State Department?

Is Trump aware of the Arafat-inspired mantra that calls for “a million shaheeds to march on Jerusalem”?

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city aroused, unsurprisingly, a massive wave of opposition in the Arab and Islamic world for two main reasons – one religious and one nationalist.

The religious reason is rooted in Islam’s conception of itself as a faith whose mission is to bring both Judaism and Christianity to an end, inheriting all that was once Jewish or Christian: Land, places of worship and people. In Islam’s worldview, Falestin in its entirely belongs to Muslims alone because both Jews and Christians betrayed Allah when they refused to become followers of His prophet Mohammed, the punishment for that being expulsion from their land and the forfeiture of all rights to it.
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December 14, 2017 | 9:46 am | 1 Comment »

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Bankrupting Hezbollah Will Help Contain Iran  

By Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, ISRAEL LAW CENTER

A portrait of the head of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, is seen on November 5, 2017, in the southern Lebanese village of Adshit. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his resignation on November 4, citing Iran’s “grip” on the country and threats to his life. (Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images)

As if the Middle East wasn’t unstable enough…

There has been a lot of saber rattling going on of late in a part of the world where the talk of war all too frequently results in innocent people being murdered and maimed. For a change, the rhetoric didn’t involve the Israelis or the Palestinians, nor did it center on the usual suspects who could always be relied upon to send a few sparks on the region’s endless reservoir of dangerous flammables. This time talk of war was between Iran and the House of Saud: a fight between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam with the stakes being dominance over a region that has been struggling over this bitter religious schism for centuries.
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December 14, 2017 | 9:26 am | 1 Comment »

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State Department Digs In Against U.S. Recognition Of Israel’s Capital City  

By SETH LIPSKY, NY SUN

Now that President Trump has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, what will the State Department do? It resents Israel and has been fighting the Jewish state for years. Is it ready to comply?

Don’t bet on it. That’s my advice.

Foggy Bottom is the worst swamp in Washington, haunted by the ghost of Loy Henderson, the diplomat who tried to defeat the very idea of Israel.

He lost decisively 70 years ago, when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, clearing the way for a Jewish state. And, in May 1948, when President Harry Truman recognized Israel 11 minutes after it declared independence. He overruled the vociferous objections of the State Department.
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December 14, 2017 | 6:52 am | 1 Comment »

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A Tale of Two Cities  

by Mitzi Alvin

It is a little known fact that there was once a sizable number of Jews living on the Arabian Peninsula. They came there around the time of the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem and, as is the tendency with Jews, they prospered. During their long stay they managed to establish many productive and successful communities. One such place was a town named Yathrib.

Now, it so happened that in year the 622 C.E. a charismatic merchant named Mohammed was expelled from his native Mecca for annoying his relatives. It seems he was a little over-zealous in promoting a new religion, a strong, no-nonsense religion which he called Islam, or as it translates into English, Submission. Since he had announced himself its designated prophet, his enthusiasm for this new-fangled creation was not surprising. Nor did denial by his own deter him. Rather, it spurred him on to take his business elsewhere. So, forthwith he headed for Yathrib. And, because it was a prosperous town, he made up his mind to settle there and give the local population, most of whom were Jews, the benefit of his inspiration.
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December 14, 2017 | 6:24 am | 6 Comments »

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The Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel  

Oded Eran, INSS,

Insight No. 1000, December 13, 2017

The historic announcement on December 6, 2017 that the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel evoked both expressions of support and waves of protest. However, it seemed that many did not understand the full significance of what President Trump described as the “recognition of reality,” as he stated explicitly that the American position on the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty had not changed, and said indirectly that American recognition of Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s “capital” only applied to that part of the reality that is not disputed by the Palestinians and Arab states. Moreover, while Israeli expressions of satisfaction with the American President’s move are justified, if the leaders of the neighboring Arab states that are considered US allies – Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia – analyze his words carefully, they will understand that they contain nothing that contradicts the Arab Peace Initiative.
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December 13, 2017 | 6:25 pm | Comments »

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Abbas Pressured by Saudi MBS to Forget Palestinian Refugees, Quds  

T. Belman. The more I think about Trump’s recognition or Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the less enamoured I am. Tilerson threw cold water on it saying it wouldn’t be happenning for years. Nothing has changed on the ground. Israel didn’t need Trujmp’s recognition because there is no way a deal coulod be cut with Israel if Jerusalem were not included. And that leaves open the possibility that Israel would agree to east Jerusalem being the capital of Palestine. We are no closer to a deal in which Israel gets Jerusalem as its undivided capital, .

Secondly the Arabs are now asking the world to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. It might do that in opposition to Trump’s recognition.

Trump’s recognition is touted to be an embrace of reality. The whole Arab narrative is a denial of reality. Israel relies on the truth and the Arabs relie on falsity. But the world including the US see this as two competing narratives that require concessions on both sides. This must be rejected. The truth is that Jews have the legal right to all of the “disputed land”. That should be the starting point of any discussion.

FARSI NEWS

TEHRAN (FNA)- Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman has laid increasing pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to give up his quest for the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and for making Quds the capital of a Palestinian state, an Arab media outlet disclosed.

“Bin Salman has told Mahmoud Abbas to forget about the Quds case and the refugees’ right to return to their country and start a bid to establish a state in Gaza,” the Arabic-language al-Arabi al-Jadid news website reported on Tuesday, adding that the de facto ruler has promised “Abbas huge financial aid in return”.
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December 13, 2017 | 4:47 pm | 7 Comments »

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Making Saudi Great Again  

MBS delivers big reforms

By Sohrab Ahmari, COMMENTARY

Writing in these pages last month, I described Muhammad bin Salman’s reform agenda in Saudi Arabia as “the real Arab Spring.” The 32-year-old Saudi crown prince, widely known as MBS, seeks to dramatically transform the ultra-conservative kingdom, I argued. But he is pursuing change in a top-down, authoritarian manner that is better-attuned to the character and needs of his people. His methods are less likely to yield the chaos and state failure that resulted from the popular uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa in 2010 through 2012.

Now comes more evidence that MBS is serious about liberalization. On Monday, Saudi authorities lifted the 35-year ban on commercial movie theaters in the kingdom. Americans encountering the news might be tempted to laugh it off: “Saudi Arabia takes a bold step into 1905!” But for Saudis with few outlets for fun, dating, and socialization, the return of movie night is no small matter. The announcement follows MBS’s decision to give women the right to drive and attend soccer games. No longer will being young and female in Saudi be synonymous with suffocating boredom.
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December 13, 2017 | 1:38 pm | 2 Comments »

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Is Jordan paying the price for Jerusalem criticism?  

by

Protesters hold Palestinian flags during a demonstration near the American embassy in Amman last week [Muhammad Hamed/Reuters]Protesters hold Palestinian flags during a demonstration near the American embassy in Amman last week [Muhammad Hamed/Reuters]

December 13, 2017 | 8:20 am | Comments »

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Is today’s “social justice” Jewish?  

By Josh Block, TABLET

There are more than 7 billion people in the world, and roughly 13 million Jews. There are 6 million Jews in America, and about the same in Israel, with the remainder scattered about the globe. So that leaves about just 6 million Jews in their natural habitat: If we were of the animal kingdom, the Jewish people would be an endangered species. It seems the world will do more to preserve the spotted owl in its natural habitat than the last remaining Jews in theirs. Perhaps Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, should be like a bird sanctuary, and the world should make it a special crime to kill a Jew.

The Jewish people are special. There aren’t many of us left. The perils of assimilation are not new. However, the catastrophic results of our collective failure to give our children an adequate sense of Jewish identity and experience, of Jewish specialness—the depth of this weakness in the fabric of our collective identity, which saps the will of young Jews to stand apart when it’s uncomfortable or unpopular—this is new. And the impact is accelerating.
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December 13, 2017 | 8:04 am | Comments »

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The Palestinian false narrative should be totally rejected  

The ransom never works.

By Bruce Thornton, FPM

President Trump last Wednesday announced that the United States formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that work will start on physically moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The uproar over this announcement epitomizes the futility and duplicity that for seven decades has fed the lies lying at the heart of the conflict between Israel and Arabs. But Trump’s announcement should be just the beginning of a radical paradigm shift in how this country deals with the region.

One change is to abandon the appeasing gestures and empty diplomatic formulae that typify our feckless diplomacy. What Trump proposed is not a substantive change, but an acknowledgment of reality. Jerusalem already is Israel’s capital: its parliament, the Knesset, is already there, as are its supreme court, numerous government agencies, and the residence of its president. Visiting dignitaries meet their Israeli counter parts in Jerusalem. In every respect, Jerusalem functions as a national capital, except one: foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.
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December 13, 2017 | 7:45 am | Comments »

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BOMBSHELL: Evidence of CIA role in forging Obama’s birth certificate  

Government computers illegally hacked Hawaii Dept. of Health

By Jerome Corsi, INFOWARS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Infowars.com has learned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigators had discovered bombshell evidence that the CIA and or other government entities illegally hacked into Hawaii Department of Health records searching for birth records on Barack Obama.

According to information received by the investigators, the government breaches began on Nov. 14, 2008, just after Obama won his first presidential election, and continued until Jan. 12, 2011, three months before the White House released a computer version of what President Obama claimed was his authentic “Long-Form Birth Certificate” from 1961.

Michael Zullo, formerly the commander and chief investigator of the Cold Case Posse (CCP), a special investigative group created in 2006 in the office of Joseph M. Arpaio, formerly the sheriff in Maricopa County, an Arizona State Certified Law Enforcement Agency, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, provided Infowars.com sections of an electronic surveillance database created by whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery, in 2013.

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December 13, 2017 | 6:51 am | 1 Comment »

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Bahrain interfaith group pays unprecedented visit to Israel  

JERUSALEM — An interfaith group from the Gulf state of Bahrain is paying an unprecedented public visit to Israel this week, receiving a warm welcome but generating uproar across the Arab world.

The visit comes at a time when Israel is boasting of warming, albeit covert, ties with moderate Arab countries in a shared front against archrival Iran. But the heavy criticism unleashed on Arab social media, along with the low profile the group has taken, shows the limits on how far that goodwill can go.

The 25 participants, who include Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, flew to Israel on Sunday as guests of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish human rights group. The group gathered Tuesday at a restaurant overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City walls for dinner and a candle-lighting ceremony marking the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
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December 13, 2017 | 6:29 am | Comments »

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Deep State Registers at State Dept. Defy Trump’s Jerusalem Directive  

Staunch opposition from The Swamp.

By Ari Lieberman, FPM

Following President Trump’s historic declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, West Bank and Gazan Arabs took to the streets in rage. They burned U.S. and Israeli flags. They cursed America, Israel and the Yahuds (Jews). Their imams cited verses from the Koran and the Hadiths about the usurpers and interlopers and the “descendants of apes and pigs.” In other words, it was business as usual for the Palestinians. Nothing had changed.

At the State Department too, it was business as usual. In a transparent effort to placate the Arab bloc, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the process of moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would take several years. Tillerson is said to have counseled Trump against recognition.
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December 12, 2017 | 10:00 pm | 1 Comment »

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