Half a dozen long convoys of trucks carrying US arms, hurriedly put together by US military headquarters in Baghdad, have crossed the border in the last three days on their way to the Syrian Kurdish PYD-YPG militia, DEBKAfile military and intelligence sources report exclusively Monday, Nov. 14. The deliveries were expressly ordered by President Barack Obama in a radical turnaround from his five-year refusal to supply Kurdish fighters with American weaponry, least of all anti-air and anti-tank missiles.
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Ministers from Likud party rebelled against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday night by voting in favor of a bill to authorize illegal homes in West Bank settlements and outposts.
After a day of political drama, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation moved the bill forward to the Knesset, so it could be voted on in time to save the Amona outpost, which the High Court of Justice has ordered demolished by December 25.
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T. Belman. So much for AIPAC and Hillel.
by Lea Speyer and Rachel Frommer, ALGEMEINER
A program slated for Monday, featuring a lecture by renowned American-Israeli writer Caroline Glick — author, most recently, of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East — has lost the sponsorship of Jewish and pro-Israel student groups at the University of Texas at Austin fearful about how her message might anger anti-Zionists on campus, The Algemeiner has learned.
“Some people are concerned Glick may not be the best representative for what we are trying to accomplish — that is, promoting our message and advocating for Israel,” Eliav Turk, who sits on the board of both Texans for Israel and AIPAC on Campus, told The Algemeiner. “There are fears she may alienate student groups and minorities we are trying to attract, which have traditionally taken a non pro-Israel stance.”
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Today’s New York Times reports that prospective Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer backs Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison for Democratic Party Chairman. (Minnesota’s Fifth District covers Minneapolis and its inner-ring suburbs.) In the wake of Clinton’s loss, the Democratic Party seems poised to move directly to the Axis of Sanders/Warren. I have previously argued here that Ellison was a forerunner of President Obama. I’d like to revisit the argument this morning now that he may be called on to pick up the wreckage.
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By Ted Belman
Evidently not.
Huffington Post reported on Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s Popular Vote Victory Keeps Growing,
Hillary Clinton not only won the popular vote in Tuesday’s election. It is now clear that she won it by a margin larger than two candidates who went on to win the presidency.
Votes are still being counted, however, with the outstanding ballots overwhelmingly concentrated in Democratic bastions like California, Washington state and New York.
The Times’ Nate Cohn estimated on Saturday that there were a total of 7 million votes left to be counted nationwide. As of Thursday, more than 4 million votes had yet to be counted in California alone.
T. Belman. Who’s he kidding? First of all, there are no binding resolutions prohibiting the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem, including Res 181. Second of all, Trump will come out swinging. He will prevent the PA from paying terrorists and will probably prevent them from inciting violence. He can do this by withholding financial support. Trump has also indicated that he will cut off funds to UNCHR should it continue to single out Israel for condemnation. There is no end to the damage he can do to the PA.
PA’s UN envoy says the PA will act at the UN if President-elect follows through on his promise to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem.
If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the Palestinian Arabs will “make life miserable” for the United States at the United Nations, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the United Nations is threatening.
“If people attack us by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is a violation of Security Council resolutions, it is a violation of resolution 181 of the UN general assembly that was drafted by the U.S. … it means they are showing belligerency towards us … If they do that nobody should blame us for unleashing all of the weapons that we have in the UN to defend ourselves and we have a lot of weapons in the UN,” the envoy, Riyad Mansour, said on Friday, according to Haaretz.
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T. Belman. Ellison used the Koran when taking the oath to uphold the constitution
Two top Jewish figures associated with the Democratic Party, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, are backing the candidacy of a Muslim, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, for the party chair.
Schumer, of New York, in line to be the next party leader in the Senate, is backing Ellison’s candidacy, according to anonymously sourced reports Friday in Politico and by NBC.
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T. Belman. As this article suggests, Trump will seek agreement on spheres of influence. I think he will cede Crimea to Russia and cede a Syrian rump state to Assad/Russia. In return he will get their agreement to a Sunni state in rest of Syria and in the Sunni part of Iraq. This will pacify his Sunni allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and help to create a bulwark against Iran. This state will need a strong ruler designated by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. I think he will also seek Russian agreement to exclude Iran from Syrian influence thereby neutering Hezbollah. Iraq is 60% Shiite. Rather than cede what’s left of Iraq to Iran he may try to sever the relation so that Iraq is independent of Iran.
We’ll see. A lot to negotiate by the negotiator in chief.
Trump’s “America first” is likely to make him cooperate with Putin on Syria.
Anyone interested in how the United States president-elect Donald Trump will fill in the many blanks in his foreign policy should keep an eye on the Middle East – the most dramatic convergence point of ongoing American military engagements and Russia’s foreign policy.
Russia and its leader President Vladimir Putin is also the issue on which Trump has spoken with perhaps the most clarity and specificity, amid his otherwise vague and often changing foreign policy positions.
Syria, in particular, is where Trump’s emphatic “America-first” principles and his disdain for promoting regime change and nation-building abroad naturally line up with two of his expressed views: The US should get out of the war in Syria and avoid destabilising more Middle Eastern countries, and the US should work with Putin to defeat terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
Donald Trump’s ratings soar in Iranian media too
In more than one campaign speech, President elect Donald Trump declared that his number priority was “to dismantle the disastrous deal” with Iran, which he said was “the worst deal ever” He was referring to the 2015 accord negotiated with Iran by the 5P+1 (five Permanent Security Council members plus Germany), which the Obama administration presented as putting the lid on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
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If we play our cards right, like the American people, Israel stands to gain in ways we never dreamed of.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2016 Policy Conference. (photo credit:SAUL LOEB / AFP)
What can we expect from President- elect Donald Trump’s administration?
The positions that Trump struck during the presidential campaign were sometimes inconsistent and even contradictory. So it is impossible to forecast precisely what he will do in office. But not everything is shrouded in mystery. Indeed, some important characteristics of his administration are already apparent.
First of all, President Barack Obama’s legacy will die the moment he leaves the White House on January 20. Republicans may not agree on much. But Trump and his party do agree that Obama’s policies must be abandoned and replaced. And they will work together to roll back all of Obama’s actions as president.
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One of the biggest losers from the U.S presidential election of Donald Trump is the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority depended on the election of Hillary Clinton so that they could unleash a diplomatic blitz against Israel in the halls of the United Nations. “Civil society” organizations were specifically designed for the task of expelling the State of Israel from the United Nations and replacing it with Palestine. The brazen demand that Israel “return” the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Palestinians is part of the Palestinian strategy to erase Israel and inherit its Jewish heritage, much in the same vein as the PA scheme of pushing a “Palestinian Jesus.”
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By Reza Parchizadeh, AMERICAN THINKER
John Robert Bolton is the right person to take the helm of the State Department. Donald Trump himself has praised Bolton and suggested him for the post. Here I am going to tell you why his hunch was right, and why he must stay on that track.
Bolton is best for three reasons. First, he is well versed in security matters, and we live in volatile times when security issues have come to overwhelmingly dominate U.S. foreign affairs and thus should be adeptly tackled in foreign policy. Bolton is quite familiar with security threats, as he has been studying them and working to neutralize them for the greater part of his career. As under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs (2001-2005), Bolton advised President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell on matters of security policy, especially with regard to international and regional security, defense relations, arms control, and non-proliferation.
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By Karen Quillan, AMERICAN THINKER
Hillary Clinton matched President Obama’s historically low percentage of the Jewish vote, driving a third of Jews into the Republican camp, an unheard of percentage before Obama’s pro-Iran policies. Obama also turned Jews off by his blatant personal antipathy to Israel’s prime minister, so the question was whether Jews would come back as a voting bloc for Clinton, who is thought of as a friend to Israel by many Jews, merely by association with her husband.
The answer is no, Jews did not return to the Democratic fold.
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Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to «go quietly into that good night». On the morning after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent the coming together of Democratic «Blue America» and Republican «Red America» into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros.
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“Building That Wall”, End “War On Coal”, Repeal Obamacare, Dismantle Dodd-Frank
On his transition website GreatAgain.gov, the Trump team has laid out the framework of his initial policies with policies focused i) on American Security including as Defense and National security, Immigration Reform and Building That Wall, and Energy Independence; ii) Getting America Back to Work Again including Tax Reform; Regulatory Reform; Trade Reform; Education; Transportation & Infrastructure and Financial Services Reform; and iii) Government for the people including Healthcare Reform (Obamacare), Veterans Administration Reform and Protecting Americans’ Constitutional Rights.
The key highlights include:
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TRUMP KNOWS MORE ABOUT FOREIGN AFFAIRS THAN YOU KNOW.
Thursday’s cordial meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama was a reassuring ritual of democracy. But Obama was far from convincing when he told Trump “we are now going to do everything we can to help you succeed.” There are some highly disparate ideas here about what constitutes success, both foreign and domestic. There are also big areas in which one might reasonably wonder if Obama and his team are in a quandary over the prospect of a Trump administration inheriting the internal records of the most transparent administration ever.
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