After openly backing Israel, why is Modi’s India voting at UN like a Congress government?

THE PRINT

India’s vote at the United Nations shows that it joined hands with two of its worst enemies, Pakistan and China, to vote against two of its best strategic partners in modern times: the United States and Israel. India cannot stand by its dependable allies at critical times. During the Cold War, India always engaged in diplomatic monkey balancing at the UN to keep the Non-Aligned Movement members happy. Since Narendra Modi came to power, Indians expected that he would shape the nation’s foreign policy and some writers began speaking of the Modi doctrine.

But India’s vote at the UN shows that the Modi doctrine doesn’t exist. India is directionless even in neighbourhood where Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and others are falling into the Chinese sphere. It was not expected of Modi government to vote against the US and Israel, especially since the prime minister paid a historic visit to Israel last July, forging a strong and durable India-Israel strategic relationship.
Read more…

By Roger Kaplan, SPECTATOR

On the matter of Jerusalem, the United States stands with Israel, and the two stand alone against the world. Which is as it should be.

Why should Israel be the only nation in the world that forfeits the right to decide where to locate its capital? And why should the U.S. be the only nation in the world that must defer to third parties before recognizing an allied country’s sovereign choice?Donald Trump last week, in formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing we should commence the building of an embassy there, noted that he was not only doing what was right but what is sensible. Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since 1948.
Read more…

By David Singer, CFP

Humiliating President Trump by declaring his decision recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as being “null and void and must be rescinded” – spells financial and political trouble for the United Nations (UN), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the European Union (EU) and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The timing of Trump’s decision can certainly be criticised—but questioning Trump’s sovereign right to make that decision constitutes a flagrant attempt to undermine the offices of the democratically-elected US President and Congress.

T. Belman. I am not surprised by this, only thankful. I saw it coming but didn’t know when exactly. When promoting the Jordan Option, I always mentioned that it would mean the end of the PA and UNWRA. I thought that Jordan’s King Abdullah would fall first. I still believe he won’t last a year.

DEBKA

The White House has decided to quietly withdraw from all its ties with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas.

DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report that the Trump administration has resolved to scrap all ties with the Palestinian leadership in retaliation for its campaign against US President Donald Trump and his Jerusalem policy. Several warnings to Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) of what was in store if he did not desist from castigating the US president fell on death ears.

Read more…

T. Belman. I suspect any poll conducted by CNN. But if it is a true reflection of  what American’s think, I am shocked. This should be a no-brainer.

Trump should follow through on his threats to deny funding to the UN, those who voted in favor of the UNGA resolution and the PA. all of whom stand in opposition to his policies. He should not let them get away with it.

Besides the UN is of no value to the US or to Israel. Its time for the UN to be replaced by an organization of allies of the US.

Only 36% of respondents to CNN survey favor moving US embassy to holy city; support for Trump recognizing Israel’s capital split along party lines>

By TOI STAFF

A giant US flag screened alongside Israel’s national flag on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, December 6, 2017. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)

A poll released Friday indicated that fewer than half of Americans support US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with an even smaller number supporting moving the US embassy to the city from Tel Aviv.

On whether they approve of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, 44 percent of respondents told CNN they back Trump’s decision, while 45% said they disapprove. Only 36% said they support moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as Trump said he would.
Read more…

By Mark A Hewitt, AMERICAN THINKER

Few Americans are aware of America’s largest terrorist prosecution in U.S. federal court, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, et al. During the trial, in November of 2008, the government presented evidence that the Holy Land Foundation and five defendants provided approximately $12.4 million in support to Hamas and its goal of creating an Islamic Palestinian state by eliminating the State of Israel through violent jihad:

“In August of 2004, an alert Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer observed a woman wearing traditional Islamic garb videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and conducted a traffic stop. The driver was Ismail Elbarasse and detained on an outstanding material witness warrant issued in Chicago in connection with fundraising for Hamas. The FBI’s Washington Field Office subsequently executed a search warrant on Elbarasse’s residence in Annandale, Virginia. In the basement of his home, a hidden sub-basement was found; it revealed over 80 banker boxes of the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.” One of the most important of these documents made public to date was entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation trial. It amounted to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan in America and was entitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”

Read more…

By Peter Hasson, DAILY CALLER 

The former Obama officials who manufactured a media “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal are now working to undermine a bombshell report that revealed how former President Barack Obama’s administration derailed its own Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts to stop Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah from developing a global narcotics syndicate.

The Obama administration gave Hezbollah a pass, according to a bombshell Politico piece, in order to protect the Iran deal — one of the few remaining pillars of Barack Obama’s legacy.
Read more…

When it comes to real construction on the ground, building has been down so far this year.

By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

It is an odd day when the United Nations, Israel’s harshest critic, speaks of how the Jewish state is doing less, not more, when it comes to the actual building of settler homes in the West Bank.

Even stranger when that information is widely publicized for the first time to the United Nations Security Council in a webcast session designed to mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlement activity and rules that the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and the Western Wall do not belong to Israel.
Read more…

There has not been that significant a change inside the 193-member organization.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy doctrine is based on a simple idea: Israel’s position in international organizations will improve as its bilateral relations with individual countries gets better.

This is something that he has repeatedly said will take a long time, but something that he believes is beginning to take place. Or, as he said just prior to Thursday’s UN vote where Israel and the US took a beating, “Attitudes toward Israel by many countries in the world, on all continents, are changing outside the walls of the UN, and in the end this will trickle down inside the walls of the UN building – the House of Lies.”
Read more…

By Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov, INSS

On December 18, 2017, President Donald Trump presented the latest United States National Security Strategy. The document defines the administration’s world view on national security, and sketches the main principles that are intended to guide its approach. Regarding the Middle East, the National Security Strategy stresses that the United States does not intend to withdraw from the Middle East or limit its presence in the region, and highlights three central threats: the entrenchment of terror organizations and the export of terror to the rest of the world; Iranian expansion in the region, including support for terror and subversion; and threats to the stability of the global energy economy. For Israel, the National Security Strategy indicates the need for an American-Israeli dialogue in order to formulate a strategy for coordinated security policy in the Middle East.
Read more…

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Breitbart.com.

For decades, the United Nations has spit in the face of the United States. The demonization of the Jewish state – modern antisemitism – has been one of many UN policy priorities totally antithetical to American values and interests.

The General Assembly vote on December 21 condemning President Donald Trump’s implementation of American law recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel ought to be the last time America takes it lying down.

Let’s be clear about how we got here. Thursday’s meeting was the seventeenth time the UN General Assembly has convened the so-called “tenth” emergency special session on Israel since 1997. That’s because the “tenth” session is effectively permanent. At the end of the meeting, the President of the General Assembly stressed that the session was merely “adjourned.”
Read more…

$584 million to be paid out after New Year’s, with trustee Irving Picard saying he expects to find much more

By JTA

The trustee charged with recovering the investments for victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme has recovered about 73 percent of the lost principal of $17.5 billion.

New payouts of $584 million will be made after the start of the new year, Crain’s New York reported.
Read more…

After a year of Trump, and the launch of his national security platform, it’s clear: He’s not pushing isolationism, he’s pushing common sense. That’s good news for Israel, even though most U.S. Jews won’t give him credit – and don’t even care

By Jonathan Tobin, HAARETZ

President Donald Trump speaks on national security Monday, Dec. 18, 2017, in Washington. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

As with everything else about President Donald Trump, the unveiling of his administration’s foreign policy doctrine this week was more of a campaign rally than anything else.

Trump ticked off his favorite hobby horses — immigration, borders, bad trade deals, building up the military and U.S. allies not paying their fair share for the common defense.
Read more…

If a significant portion of the country believes that the special counsel was unfair, this could help in legal proceedings before judges or jurors.

BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ, JPOST

The Trump team is probably not going to seek to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To do so would be to provoke Trump’s crucial supporters in Congress. Instead, they seem to be seeking to discredit him and his investigation.

This is apparently designed to achieve two possible results: the first is to put pressure on the special prosecutor to lean over backwards to avoid any accusation of bias against Trump and his team. Mueller cares deeply about his reputation for integrity and will want to emerge from this process with that reputation intact. Accordingly, he may err – consciously or unconsciously – in favor of Trump in close cases so that the public will regard him as unbiased and fair-minded.
Read more…

It’s not Islamophobia, it’s the truth. Stop the double standards for Muslim crime before it takes over your lives.

By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

Speech written for Berlin against Islamism Organization rally, sent to Arutz  Sheva by Professor Chesler

We know that Islamic gender and religious apartheid has penetrated Europe. 
Read more…

Conservative warrior sheds light on the cultural factors that led to Trump’s victory at Restoration Weekend.

FPM
Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of remarks given by Mark Steyn at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2017 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 16th-19th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

Mark Steyn: Thank you. Thank you very much.  I’m stunned to hear that Mark has put my image on his kid’s Onesie.  If there’s anybody from Florida Child Services’ SWAT team in the house, you should take him down now, and it’s very flattering.  It’s very flattering.  To be described as a fearless warrior.  I blush after we’ve listened to what Clinton had to tell us earlier, because it’s one thing to be introduced as a fearless warrior when you’re a medal of honor recipient, but to be introduced as a fearless warrior when you’ve made a cat album, I think that speaks to the devaluation of “hero” in our society that Clinton was actually speaking about a little earlier.  I will come back and say a word about Afghanistan later because on one turn, I think it’s particularly important after what Clinton was saying.
Read more…