McCarthy, on calls for Trump impeachment: Obama did worse protecting Hillary

25 ‘impeachable’ Obama scandals far more serious than Comey firing

BY Alan M. Dershowitz, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Although the White House denies that President Trump asked then FBI Director James Comey to “let this go” — “this” being the agency’s investigation of his fired national security advisor Mike Flynn — Comey’s contemporaneous memo suggests that it may well be true.

If so, the Comey account presents a complex constitutional issue: Can a sitting President be guilty of obstruction of justice for asking the director of the FBI to let go of an investigation of a former White House aide?
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Morning Jolt by Jim Geherety, NATIONAL REVIEW

Thursday, White House communications officials were eager to spotlight these comments from legislators, admitting or confirming, that they had, so far, seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post: “But just to be clear, there has been no actual evidence yet.”

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): “No, it has not been.”

Keep in mind, this is “Mad Maxine” Waters, who begins that interview by contending, “Lock her up, lock her up, all of that, I think that was developed strategically with people from the Kremlin, with Putin.” Right, right, there’s no way the Trump campaign could have possibly thought of that rallying cry on their own. That’s gotta be the work of Russian intelligence right there — you’ve cracked the case, Congresswoman! Read more…

HAARETZ

[..] The administration has yet to forge a Jewish outreach operation, and is relying on a handful of Jewish billionaires and inner-circle advisers instead of the organized Jewish community.

“When it comes to Israel issues, we’re not needed in this White House,” said a representative of a major Jewish organization. “Jared, Greenblatt and Friedman think they don’t need any advice.” The representative, who would not speak on record due to the need to maintain future contacts with administration, was referring to Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, his adviser on global negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and the new ambassador to Israel David Friedman. All the three are Jewish.

Other officials in Jewish organizations who spoke to the Forward shared this sentiment. Breaking with tradition set by previous presidents, both Democratic and Republican, Trump and his advisers had not organized a meeting with Jewish leaders before his upcoming trip to Israel or to brief representatives on policy issues relating to U.S.-Israel relations.
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…and bring peace to the Middle East.

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

In 1990, there were half as many Palestinians as Kuwaitis in Kuwait. Two years later there were almost none.

With the support of the international community, some 700,000 Kuwaitis expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their country. If they had not done it, basic arithmetic shows that the Palestinians would have outnumbered Kuwaitis in Kuwait in a generation.

The Palestinians of Kuwait were kidnapped, tortured and killed.  “Kill a Palestinian and Go to Heaven,” became the slogan. When Kuwait was “liberated”, tanks and armored vehicles were sent into the Hawally suburb of Kuwait City known as Little Palestine. Half the buildings were knocked down by bulldozers. Some detained Palestinians were buried in mass graves. The vast majority, including those who had been born in Kuwait, were deported or forced to flee a land they had lived in for a generation.
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American Jews, following American liberalism, have abandoned belief in the nation-state, non-voluntary communities, and religion in the public square

By Evelyn Gordon

In his essay “Why Many American Jews are Becoming Indifferent or Even Hostile to Israel,” Daniel Gordis lists, as key sources of tension, four major differences between the American and the Israeli political projects. His analysis strikes me as largely accurate, yet I think he misses something important by treating the differences as longstanding and perhaps even inherent. In fact, most are of recent vintage, and there is nothing inevitable or intractable about them. They are the product, first, of dramatic changes in the tenets of political liberalism, and second, of a collective decision by many American Jews to follow the new liberalism wherever it leads—even when it contradicts longstanding axioms of both American politics and traditional Judaism.
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Throughout the Obama administration, US officials illegally leaked top secret information about Israeli operations to the media.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST,  MAY 18, 2017

The United States is sailing in uncharted waters today as the intelligence-security community wages an all-but-declared rebellion against President Donald Trump.

Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein’s decision on Wednesday to appoint former FBI director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel charged with investigating allegations of “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” is the latest and so far most significant development in this grave saga.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

For fruits of Israeli victory to endure, any post-victory reality must preclude a self-governing Palestinian entity, which would always be subjected to external incitement to fight the Jewish “intruders” 

Of all the nations at the UN the Palestinian state would be the only one which has limits imposed on its sovereignty, the only one without an army or air force. It would be the only one in the world that would be classified as second-class state; it would resemble the black protectorates in South Africa. Such inferiority…would mean a deepening of Palestinian humiliation, an intensification of the enmity towards Israel and the perpetuation of the Arab-Jewish conflict. This is the real pitfall in the proposal to establish a separate Palestinian state between us and the desert. – Prof. Amnon Rubinstein “The Pitfall of a Third State” (Hebrew), Ha’aretz,  August 8, 1976.

This was not really the topic I originally intended to write on this week.
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By J. E. Dyer, JEWISH PRESS May 18, 2017

It’s time to call a halt to the leak problem from the U.S. intelligence community. This is beyond a “leak problem.” It is spilling over into outright sabotage of America’s national interests, all in the quest to bring President Trump down.

After yesterday’s story by the Washington Post was repudiated by H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, and Dina Powell, McMaster made additional comments Tuesday morning to clarify exactly how false the story was.

The gist of the original story was that President Trump, in speaking to the visiting Russians last week about an ISIS “laptop plot,” revealed highly classified details that would have allowed the Russians to determine what the source of some of the intelligence was. The WaPo article made reference to the sensitive intelligence of a foreign ally, and to Trump disclosing the city in which the intel was gained. (N.B. — WaPo could only have gained this impression from people who weren’t there, but who are bound by oath to not reveal exactly the sort of intelligence they allege Trump revealed.)
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Al MONITOR

Jordan is anxiously watching military and security developments along its northern border with war-torn Syria, according to a number of Jordanian military and strategic analysts with whom Al-Monitor recently spoke amid heightened tensions between Amman and Damascus. Since King Abdullah II’s April 5 visit to Washington, there have been conflicting reports about a sizeable military buildup of US and British troops on the Jordanian side of the border with Syria, raising questions about a possible joint incursion into southern Syria, apparently to pre-empt and confront Islamic State (IS) expansion in the vast Badia region.
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This Is Not the Reset They’re Looking For

Byu Yoel Guzansky and Sigurd Neubauer, FOREIGN AFFAIRS Wednesday, May 10, 2017

In late April, the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, appointed one of his sons, Prince Khalid bin Salman, as the kingdom’s new ambassador to the United States. The appointment was part of larger reshuffling at the top of the Saudi government. Khalid’s ascent was a sign of the growing power of his older brother, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman [1], the Saudi minister of defense.

Khalid’s appointment is also largely seen as an attempt by King Salman to boost ties between the Saudi royal family and U.S. President Donald Trump [2], who himself has delegated significant foreign policy responsibilities to his son-in-law Jared Kushner. After years of strained relations with former President Barack Obama, the Saudis appear to be optimistic about the new president. Trump has a well-established record of hostility toward the kingdom’s main rival, Iran, and in particular toward the Obama administration’s Iran deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), which Saudi Arabia only reluctantly came to terms with.
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Email from Operations Officer of a military/ intelligence organization.

Nearly, without exception we do not publish articles that even remotely touch on politics. 

 

However, the New York Times and the Washington Post, by redefining a routine statement  of information well known to the public into a “dangerous intelligence leak to the Russians” and their subsequent speculation on  the information having been obtained by Israel is  a direct challenge  to ISIS  to hunt down and kill possible Israeli and American intelligence operatives.

 

  Publication was approved unanimously by the reviewing committee.

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By Ted Belman

In Feb 2016, Lt Gen. Mike Flynn became an advisor to candidate Donald Trump. Trump was interested in his views of how to defeat radical Islam.

In the summer of that year, Flynn published his book “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win The Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies.”

In it he wrote, “The political and theological underpinnings of their immoral actions have to be demolished.”

According to Breitbart:

“The book identifies the main enemy to Islam’s ideological encouragement of supremacism, violence, and expansionism, describes Iran as a ‘linchpin” of a loose anti-American alliance of Russia, Islam, China, and North Korea, and calls for a diplomatic effort to flip Russia against Iran and radical Islam. When dealing with Islamic militants, he writes, ”[w]e’ve got to stop feeling the slightest bit guilty about calling them by name and identifying them as fanatical killers acting on behalf of a failed civilization.”

Even though Flynn was asked to resign in February, Trump is following his prescription to a tee.
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A Middle East analyst close to the White House tells Fox News about the report, “the president has been clear that he wants to see peace and integration between Israel and its Arab neighbors, not least of all so they can cooperate against the threat posed by Iran. This is a welcome step in that direction. It makes many requests of the Israelis and the White House knows the Israelis can’t meet all of them, and the President won’t pressure them to. But these sorts of initiatives are the sorts of deals the President wants to see from regional players.”

Fox News May 16, 2017

Gulf states that long opposed Israel’s every move are proposing a rapprochemont in the hopes of restarting the Palestinian peace process.

The development comes just days ahead of historic meetings between President Trump and Middle Eastern leaders. It consists of a draft proposal reportedly offered up by Sunni Muslim Gulf states and offers closer economic and diplomatic ties with Israel in exchange for significant moves in restarting the Palestinian peace process.

The plan, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is outlined in a draft document circulated by the Gulf states, the mostly Sunni Muslim countries that line the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
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By Daniel Greenfield, FPM May 10/17

Kris Bauman, the National Security Council’s new point man on Israel, believes that the “Israel Lobby” is a threat, that Israel should be pressured into making concessions to Islamic terrorists and that “the Obama Administration must find creative (but legal) ways to include Hamas in a solution.”

Yael Lempert, Bauman’s predecessor, had been one of the Obama holdovers that conservatives had fought to pry out of the swamp. Lempert had been described as “Obama’s point person in the White House orchestrating his war against Israel.”

Lee Smith wrote that, “Lempert, one former Clinton official told me, ‘is considered one of the harshest critics of Israel on the foreign policy far left. From her position on the Obama NSC, she helped manufacture crisis after crisis in a relentless effort to portray Israel negatively.’”
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NGO MONITOR

Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anders Samuelsen is set to hold a series of meetings in Ramallah tomorrow (May 18, 2017), where according to documents published by the Danish government, he will announce an additional $8.3 million (DKK 56 million) in Danish funding to the  Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (the Secretariat), which distributes funds to numerous anti-Israel organizations. The Secretariat is a joint funding mechanism of the Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and Swiss governments, operating out of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah.
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New US Ambassador to Israel says Trump is coming to Israel with no ‘pre-prepared plan or road map.’

By Arutz Sheva

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman in an interview with Hebrew-language newspaper Israel Hayom said US President Donald Trump will arrive next week in Israel “with no specific plan or road map in mind” and that “there are no demands for Israel to freeze building in Judea and Samaria.”

According to Friedman, “The President clearly explained what he wants to see happen in the beginning, which is that both sides should sit down at the same table with no preconditions, and talk. Hopefully, this will lead to peace.”

“The US will not dictate how you need to live together here. That’s something that only you will decide.
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By Shoula Romano Horing, AMERICAN THINKER

On Friday, President Trump’s National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, announced that Trump will indicate his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his forthcoming trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Sadly, this is another indication to Israeli supporters of Trump that despite Trump’s many campaign promises and words of support, his actions show that he is not firmly on Israel’s side.

Contrary to his campaign promises regarding Israel, he did not move the American embassy to Jerusalem, cut funding to the United Nations after UNESCO issued more anti-Israeli resolutions, or cut U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority for paying off terrorists and its ongoing culture of anti-Israeli hate. Nor did he tear up the horrible nuclear deal with Iran, or confront its regional Jihadist aspirations and he has pressured Israel to slow down the building of Jewish homes, schools, and kindergartens in its ancestral land of Judea and Samaria, to entice back Abbas to the negotiating table. It seems that Trump has made a decision to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a priority of his foreign policy and to be a neutral broker rather than Israel’s best friend and ally.
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The notion that a PLO state will make the region more stable as far more coherent Arab states collapse is absurd.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

Eight years from now, China will outstrip the US as the world’s largest economy. In three years, Israeli GDP per capita will outstrip Japan’s. These two data points are useful to bear in mind as we consider the Trump administration’s sudden decision to go retro and embrace the Clinton administration’s foreign policy on Israel from the early 1990s.

When then US president Bill Clinton decided to embrace Yasser Arafat, the architect of modern terrorism, it seemed like a safe bet.
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