Aren't we the lucky ones. Ben Rhodes is back for more Israel-bashing - by Stephen M. Flatow

Rhodes has harsh opinions about Israel. He seems proud that he helped trick the public into accepting the Iran nuclear deal. And he’s proud of his role in Obama’s policies towards Israel—in fact, he regrets that they weren’t harsher.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
05 April '19..

One of Barack Obama’s very last actions before leaving office seemed, at the time, to be one his strangest: the appointment of his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Rhodes has no connection to the Holocaust or to Jewish communal life. Although his mother is Jewish, his parents raised him Episcopalian. Yet suddenly he became part of the leadership of the agency that runs the largest and most famous Holocaust museum in the world.

The peculiar appointment of Rhodes to the Holocaust council was, I suppose, no more peculiar than his rise in the Obama administration. Rhodes had no experience in the realm of foreign policy when, at age 29, he met then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007. In fact, his college degree was in creative writing. But Rhodes and Obama became personal friends, and that was sufficient for Rhodes to zoom up the ladder from minor campaign speechwriter to deputy national security adviser and close confidant to the new president.

It’s always difficult for the public to figure out which of a president’s advisers has his ear on which policy. But Rhodes could not wait until Obama left office to start crowing about the role he had played in promoting the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In an infamous interview with The New York Times in May 2016, Rhodes boasted how he had manipulated public opinion by creating what he called an “echo chamber” of nongovernmental organizations, nuclear “experts” and sympathetic journalists. They waited anxiously by their phones for talking points from him on how to whitewash the Iranian regime and promote arguments in favor of the deal.

Now, thanks to Rhodes’s appetite for attention, we have important information, straight from the horse’s mouth, about what was going on behind the scenes in shaping Obama’s policies towards Israel.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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How the Obama State Department lied with a map - by Elder of Ziyon

The map is a lie. But look how impressed the Obama White House and John Kerry was with the deception.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 July '18..

From The New Yorker:

One afternoon in the spring of 2015, a senior State Department official named Frank Lowenstein paged through a government briefing book and noticed a map that he had never seen before. Lowenstein was the Obama Administration’s special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a position that exposed him to hundreds of maps of the West Bank. (One adorned his State Department office.)

Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Lowenstein told me, he saw “the forest for the trees”—not only were Palestinian population centers cut off from one another but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Lowenstein’s team did the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outposts, and the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated, they covered almost sixty per cent of the West Bank.

Lowenstein showed the small map to Secretary of State John Kerry and said, “Look what’s really going on here.” Kerry brought the map to his next meeting with President Obama. The map was too small for everyone in the Situation Room to see, so Lowenstein had a series of larger maps made. The information was then verified by U.S. intelligence agencies. Obama’s Presidency was winding down, but Lowenstein figured that he could use the time left to raise awareness about what the Israelis were doing. “One day, everyone’s going to wake up and go, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to stop this to at least have the possibility of a two-state solution,’ ” Lowenstein said.

This is idiotic.

The white areas of the map are essentially Areas A and B under the Oslo Accords from 1995. Under the accords, the rest of the West Bank was under Israeli control.

This has nothing to do with settlements. It is a map of Palestinian areas being misrepresented as evidence of Israeli settlement growth.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Time to ensure that Iran genuinely rips to shreds every aspect of its nuclear program, in perpetuity - by David M. Weinberg

After Israel's intelligence coup, the question becomes this: Will the boosters of the deal continue to deny reality and accuse Israel of being alarmist? Will they continue to pretend they didn't know, and to accept Iran's blatant denials? Can they possibly continue to defend the weak verification regimes and early sunsets of this inadequate accord?

David M. Weinberg..
Israel Hayom..
04 May '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/nobody-knew/

A new exhibit opening this month at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC asks the question: What did Americans know in real time about the Nazi slaughter of Jews in Europe?

Turns out that ordinary Americans, and certainly government decision-makers, knew a lot about Nazis and the Holocaust as it was happening – and quite early in the war.

But this was based on partial information. There was no absolute proof, and nobody wanted to be branded an alarmist. Moreover, few wanted to pay the price of moral action.

Turning a blind eye was somewhat easy, because there were no YouTube videos or satellite feeds, and no Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter messages with pleas for help from Jews about to be gassed and incinerated.

So people preferred to pretend they didn't know, or they could tell themselves that they weren't sure enough to act, or they could accept denials of the emerging atrocities at face value.

You might say: There was no smoking gun.

In today's world, none of these exculpations holds water. In today's world – with live feeds and social media everywhere – everybody knows everything instantaneously. It's hard to take refuge in denialism when atrocities occur or when threats are building up.

And yet, in relation to the Middle East, people have preferred to pretend they didn't know, or to tell themselves that they weren't sure enough to act, or to accept denials of the atrocities and threats at face value.

This applies to the seven-year-long war in Syria and to massive human rights violations in Turkey. The community of democracies has done nothing to stop Assad's slaughter; few have protested Erdogan's dictatorial takeover.

It applies to the Hezbollah missile buildup in Lebanon, and to Yasser Arafat's and Mahmoud Abbas' anti-Semitic leadership of the Palestinian national movement, and so much more. People have preferred to look the other way or pretend they didn't fully know – and thus they are not compelled to act.

The same goes for the Iranian drive to build nuclear weapons.

Two vice presidential visits to Israel, but as different as night and day. - by Stephen M. Flatow

Watching Pence’s address, I could not help but recall the very different actions of the last vice president who visited Israel.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
28 January '18..

Anybody who watched Vice President Mike Pence’s address to the Knesset had to be deeply impressed by his heartfelt solidarity with Israel. His repeated pledges of support for the Jewish state were authentic and unwavering.

On Nov. 10, 2016, Vice President Joe Biden (left) meets with then Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the White House. Credit: Office of the Vice President of the United States.
Unlike the previous president, who seemed to think the Jews took an interest in Eretz Yisrael only because of the Holocaust, Pence did not shy away from affirming the Jewish people’s ancient ties to the land of Israel.

“It was the faith of the Jewish people that gathered the scattered fragments of a people and made them whole again, that took the language of the Bible and the landscape of the Psalms and made them live again,” Pence said. “And it was faith that rebuilt the ruins of Jerusalem and made them strong again. The miracle of Israel is an inspiration to the world. And the United States of America is proud to stand with Israel and her people, as allies and cherished friends.”

Watching Pence’s address, I could not help but recall the very different actions of the last vice president who visited Israel.

Joe Biden visited Israel in March 2010. Almost exactly at the moment Biden was speaking at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “somebody” leaked to the press that the Israeli government supposedly had just announced plans to build 1,600 Jewish homes in “occupied East Jerusalem.”

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Protecting Hezbollah's Drug Trafficking: The Iran Deal's additional costs that neither the Israeli PM nor American public knew.

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah's billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House's desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

Josh Meyer..
Politico.com..
December '17..






PART I
A GLOBAL THREAT EMERGES
How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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U.S. State Department's Report on Terrorism and Why It Should Be Discredited - by A. Z. Mohamed

...Like Abbas and the PA, the State Department report deserves to be discredited, and sadly -- along with its promotion of the criminalization of freedom of speech and its own attempts at censorship -- the State Department holdovers along with it.

A. Z. Mohamed..
Gatestone Institute..
02 August '17..

A newly-released report on terrorism by the US State Department so completely distorts the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Authority -- the areas it refers to as "the West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem" -- that one can assume the rest of its findings are equally inaccurate.

To set the stage for its unfounded and biased claim that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been engaged in a serious effort to combat terrorism, the report equates "extremist" Palestinians, who "continued to conduct acts of violence and terrorism in the West Bank and Jerusalem," with "[e]xtremist Israelis, including settlers, [who] continued to conduct acts of violence as well as 'price tag' attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed anti-settlement) in the West Bank and Jerusalem."

At the top of the list of supposed "continued drivers of violence" in the Palestinian Authority is an assertion even more fabricated:

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Israel and the indications that we have finally moved past Obama’s legacy - by Caroline Glick

Where we are going is still unknown. But what is certain is that by going after the sources of the continued malignancy of the conflict and pushing back against the lies that informed Obama’s policies, both Israel and the US have abandoned them.

Caroline Glick..
Carolineglick.com..
17 June '17..
Link: http://carolineglick.com/burying-saddams-legacy/

It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.

If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.

The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.

The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.

The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.

There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.

First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.

A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.

In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.

Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]… They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”

In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.

Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.

NY Times Revisits Obama-Netanyahu Relationship, Blames Israel for All Problems - by Ira Stoll

...In fact, though the personal relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu was certainly chilly, the American-Israeli relationship overall is deep and strong; it’s inaccurate to characterize it as frosty. As the Times often likes to remind us, though neglects to here, the US and Israel signed a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar military aid agreement in 2016. Economic, cultural and people-to-people ties are warm and extensive. What is “notably frosty,” to use the Times’ own term, is the attitude of the Times reporters and editors toward Mr. Netanyahu. They seem somehow to have absorbed Mr. Obama’s view.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
15 February '17..

Most Americans have moved on to the Trump presidency, but the New York Times seems stuck re-litigating the battles of the Obama years.

Perhaps the newspaper is using the opportunity to try to spin the history of the Obama presidency.

A recent, egregious example of this came in a Times article previewing the meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Times reported:

The meeting with Mr. Trump on Wednesday is expected to set the tone for the American-Israeli relationship, which was notably frosty under President Barack Obama because of Israeli settlements in occupied territory, Israel’s vehement opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran and personality clashes with Mr. Netanyahu.

What a remarkable sentence. Three reasons are listed for the “notably frosty” American-Israeli relationship.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Was There Unwritten Consent To Develop Ballistic Missiles With A Range Capable Of Striking Israel But Not Europe?

...These statements indicate that although the permission given to Iran to develop missiles capable of striking Israel is likely not a secret annex of the JCPOA, it still constitutes unwritten consent that is an integral part of the nuclear deal. It is convenient for both sides not to publish this understanding in written form – for Iran because it rejects any public reference to its missile program, which it defines as defensive but is in fact offensive; and for the Obama administration, because there would be repercussions if it were to be revealed that it had given Iran permission to develop missiles capable of striking Israel.

A. Savyon, Yigal Carmon and U. Kafash..
Memri.org..
Inquiry & Analysis Series No.1298
02 February '17..

On January 30, 2017, U.S. sources announced that Iran had conducted a failed test of a new ballistic missile, the Khorramshahr. According to reports, the missile exploded after a 965-km flight.[1] Both Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif (on January 31) and Defense Minister Dehghan (on February 1) stressed that Iran "asks permission from no one in the matter of its defense program."[2]

It should be emphasized that contrary to statements by Iranian regime spokesmen who say that Iran's missile program is defensive, missiles with a 2,000-km range are strictly offensive and strategic. This is why Iran has faced constant demands to stop developing them.

In the years that preceded the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, Iran developed ballistic missiles with ranges of 2,500-5,000 km that threaten Europe and even the U.S.
Dr. Hassan Abbasi, theoretician of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and director of the IRGC Center for Borderless Security Doctrinal Analysis, said in 2004: "We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and the English.

"Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader [Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations... And because of Khatami's policies and dialogue between the civilizations, we have been compelled to freeze our plan... and now we are [again] about to carry out the program... The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles."[3]...

...However, after U.S.-Iran negotiations began, and at the end of their first stage, in Geneva in November 2013, Iranian officials began reporting that Iran's missile program for missiles with ranges above 2,000 km was being restricted.

Thus, for example, immediately after the interim agreement was reached in Geneva, on December 10, 2013, and in reference to it, IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said that Iran is capable of producing missiles with a range of over 2,000 km but that Khamenei had restricted the IRGC to a 2,000-km range: "We want to increase the range of the IRGC's missiles, but despite this, the Leader [Khamenei] has restricted us to a range of 2,000 km. We have the capability to increase the range of our missiles, and our missiles should obviously reach Israel... The regime's red lines were not crossed during the nuclear talks with the P5+1 [Group] and in the Geneva Agreement."[6]

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The Palestinian’s 3 Denials

...Three wars against Israel from Gaza and wars spreading throughout the region under the watch of inept leadership.

FirstOneThrough..
Israel Analysis..
31 January '17..

In September 1967, the Arab States put forward the Khartoum Resolution in the wake of their defeat in the June 1967 Six Day War with Israel. The resolution set down their intransigence in accepting the nation of Israel with a call of “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it,” in a policy that would stymie any chance of peace in the region for decades. It became known as “the Three No’s.”

Today, the Palestinian Arabs have adopted their own version of the policy which can be called “The Three Denials”: deny the history of the Jews; deny the rights of the Jews; deny the acceptance of the Jews.

It will similarly block any chance for peace in the region.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Like the woman who finally succeeds in dumping her abusive husband - by Vic Rosenthal

...In two days the US will have a new President, about as different from Obama as can be imagined. There will be good things and bad things about the US-Israel relationship in the future. But one lesson can be learned from our painful experience with Obama: like the woman who finally succeeds in dumping her abusive husband, maybe we ought to insist on a little more personal space in our next relationship!

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
20 January '17..

On Tuesday, President Obama selected his aide Ben Rhodes for the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

Ben Rhodes wrote the section of the 2006 Iran Study Group report that advised sacrificing Israel to help convince Iran and Syria to leave Iraq alone. Later, as Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, he worked to sell the Iran deal to the public, even admitting that he falsified facts and created an “echo chamber” to make it seem that there was expert support for the administration’s policies. More recently, he justified the decision to promote an anti-Israel Security Council resolution by blaming Netanyahu. Rhodes is very close to Obama and has had an important role in policy-making as well as communications.

He is also one of the likely suspects for the anonymous administration official that called Netanyahu “a chickenshit” (other suspects include Obama himself). Israeli officials consider him one of the most anti-Israel operatives in the administration.

The Council, which is also the board of trustees of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, was created to “lead the nation in commemorating the Holocaust.” It has 55 members, and it seems unlikely that Rhodes’ joining has anything other than symbolic significance.

But what a symbol! Rhodes, who has been one of the public point men for the Obama Administration’s policy of rapprochement with the Holocaust-denying (and perhaps -aspiring) Iranian regime, will now play a role in teaching the lessons of the historical Holocaust.

So why did Obama do it?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Netanyahu, Congress, AIPAC and the PLO - by Caroline Glick

...Like Sunday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem, it ought to go without saying that these actions are all acts of war against Israel. The reason it is necessary to state what ought to be the self-evident fact that the PLO is a terrorist organization engaged in a total war against Israel and the Jewish People is because the people that are supposed to act on this reality insist on denying it. The Netanyahu government, the US Congress and US Jewish organizations led by AIPAC still refuse admit the truth about the PLO and draw the necessary conclusions. Those necessary conclusions are similarly self-evident. Israel and the US should cut all ties to the PLO. The PLO should be re-designated as the terrorist group it never stopped being and treated accordingly.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
09 January '17..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-Netanyahu-Congress-AIPAC-and-the-PLO-477940

It is not in the least surprising that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority did not condemn the terrorist attack on Sunday. It is not surprising because the PLO-controlled PA encouraged the attack.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute, in the aftermath of last month’s US-enabled passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criminalizes Israel, the PA went on the warpath.

Among other things, Muhammad Abu Shtayyeh, who serves as a close adviser to PLO chief and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called for an intensification of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Shtayyeh said that now is the time to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, “‘Popular resistance’ is code for throwing stones and petrol bombs and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.”

Sunday’s terrorist murderer probably was inspired by Islamic State, and its adherents’ recent truck ramming murder sprees in Nice and Berlin, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

But Sunday’s 28-year-old cold blooded killer hailed from Jerusalem, not Nice.

His brain was washed since he was five years old by the PLO-controlled PA’s steady cycle of jihadist incitement. From the time he was in preschool, the killer was indoctrinated to aspire to commit the mass murder of Jews he carried out on Sunday.

For 23 years, Israel and the US have empowered the PLO.

During this period, the terrorist group never took any concrete steps to promote peace. At no point in the past generation has a PLO leader ever told the Palestinians or supporters abroad that the time has come to bury the hatchet and accept Israel.

Instead, for 23 years, the PLO has openly supported Israel’s annihilation. Often that support has been stated in code words like “popular resistance” which everyone understands means murder.

John Kerry’s Attack on Israel: The Failed Attempt to Divert Attention from Obama's Disastrous Foreign Policy

...No amount of doting on the Palestinians can hide the fact that the Obama administration’s foreign policy pursuits have been a failure, and no amount of scapegoating Israel will hide the growing force of this assessment in the years to come.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 390..
02 January '17..
Link: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/390-frisch-kerrys-attack-on-israel-a-failed-attempt-to-divert-attention-from-obamas-disastrous-foreign-policy/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Secretary of State John Kerry’s attack on Israel last week represents a vain attempt to deflect attention from the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy. Kerry’s fixation on the Palestinian issue explains why Russia, with one-tenth the GDP of the US, has emerged as the winner in Syria against both US and Israeli interests and why Iran, its ally, has come to control two more Arab capitals by proxy. Instead of promoting core US interests, Kerry has squandered efforts on promoting a two-state solution that has failed to materialize since it was first proposed by the Peel Commission eighty years ago. Hopefully, the next administration will give core US interests their due and find creative ways to deal with the fallout of a Palestinian national movement that has failed for 100 years.

In US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech, in which he attempted to defend Washington’s abstention on the UNSCR resolution against Israeli settlements, he sounded more similar than ever before to the European leaders who reflexively condemn Israel. The similarity is rooted in a predicament shared by both the US under Obama and the EU – a weak and ineffectual foreign policy. Obama’s and Kerry’s “European” orientation has reduced American influence in world affairs to its lowest point since WWII and most certainly since the Vietnam War.

Just as the Europeans cover up their geostrategic weakness by ganging up on Israel, so too have Obama and Kerry zeroed in on Israel and the Palestinian issue as a means of covering up the abysmal failures of their foreign policy. Unfortunately, Israel is saddled with the costs of those foreign policy failures.

Kerry noted that the US concluded “an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time, and that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israel’s qualitative military edge for years to come.” True, but he neglected to mention that most of those funds will go to meet the dangers of an aggressive Iranian policy.

Tehran has been emboldened by a $50-100 billion windfall resulting from the unfreezing of its assets in Western capitals, a bonanza orchestrated by Obama and Kerry. Israel knows full well that much of that windfall will be used to buy Russian state-of-the-art anti-air defense systems. This will make it much more difficult for Israel to attack Iran when it goes nuclear (which it inevitably will). Those systems will also be used to augment Hezbollah’s massive missile inventory in southern Lebanon, which is aimed at Israel’s major population centers.

Israel is also paying dearly for Obama’s debacle in Syria. For the first time since the 1980s, Israel is severely constrained in its mastery over the skies by a strong Russian air force presence in Syria, a state of affairs the Obama administration did nothing to prevent. Incredibly, President Vladimir Putin, the leader of a country with less than half the population of the US and one tenth its GDP, has led a winning Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition against an ineffectual US. Tensions have only increased among Arabs, Kurds, Turkey, and the US. The Arab-Kurd standoff in Syria runs the risk of driving many Arabs into an alliance with IS.

Netanyahu, Sisi, Obama and the UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements - by Elliott Abrams

...I had actually thought Mr. Obama would veto, because a refusal to do so would certainly do damage to his party–a party that has suffered electoral defeats at the congressional and state level throughout his presidency. But if the information I received was right, he was more interested in departing with another smack at Israel.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
22 December '16..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/12/22/netanyahu-sisi-obama-and-the-united-nations-resolution-on-israeli-settlements/

The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to vote today (Thursday, December 22) on an Egyptian-sponsored resolution on Israeli settlement activity.

Egypt, the Arab representative on the Security Council right now, pulled the resolution this morning, so there will be no vote. There are several mysteries here, including why Egypt did that, and how President Obama planned to vote: yes, abstain, or veto.

First, it’s important to realize just how bad the resolution was. Here’s part: The Security Council–

John Kerry’s Bitter and Foolish Alternative Reality - by Jonathan Tobin

...Stabbing Israel in the back at the UN won’t bring peace any closer either, but Kerry prefers to leave the State Department with a gesture that would damage Israel and hamstring his successor rather than simply go home.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
05 December '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/john-kerry-bitter-alternative-reality-israel/

For those who thought that the Obama administration would fade away quietly in its last weeks in office without a parting shot at Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry has a message: They’re not done yet. Yesterday, while speaking at the Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Kerry let loose with a harangue that put all the blame for the lack of Middle East peace on Israel. He gave the Palestinian Authority and its undemocratic leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a pass for their refusal to negotiate seriously. He concentrated his fire on Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of his government for “ignoring all our warnings about settlements” and dooming the prospects for a two-state solution. More than that, Kerry specifically hinted that the door was still open for a U.S. initiative at the United Nations Security Council before Donald Trump is sworn into office, which would undermine Israel’s negotiating position and possibly brand it as an international outlaw.

Kerry’s rant indicated that, despite last week’s AP report that the president already determined it would be a mistake to attack Israel in this fashion during this lame-duck period, many administration officials are, as Haaretz reported, still desperately trying to persuade him to the contrary. Clearly, Kerry is one of those doing so. His Saban remarks, which came almost immediately after speech by Netanyahu at the same conference, is a sign that his campaign against Israel is far from over.

The secretary of state is right that a great many members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and some of his Cabinet ministers are strong supporters of the settlement movement. It’s equally true that, while Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his support for a two-state solution and demonstrated his willingness to talk with Abbas, most of his government and a clear majority of Israeli voters have given it up as a viable policy for the foreseeable future. That is not because most Israelis don’t want peace. They do, but, unlike Kerry and the rest of the Obama administration, they are not in denial about the Palestinians.

Kerry bizarrely referred to Abbas as “committed to non-violence” even though the Palestinian leader has continued to send mixed signals about how committed he is to peace. Abbas has made some diplomatic gestures, but he continues to laud terrorists as heroes and martyrs, pays these killers and their families pensions, and allows his official media to spread hate against Jews and Israelis. Sometimes he evens joins in himself, as when he helped foment the “stabbing intifada” by spreading canards about Israel plotting to harm the Temple Mount mosques. Most important, Abbas refused to negotiate seriously with Netanyahu even when the prime minister offered to give up most of the West Bank. Nor has he recognized the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, a sign that he doesn’t really intend to end the century-old war against Zionism that has become an inextricable part of Palestinian national identity.

Obama Administration transforms Palestinian-American terrorist into victim - by Stephen M. Flatow

...When Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008, he promised to bring about "fundamental transformations." I don't think any of us imagined he would try to transform a terrorist into a victim. But by refusing to take any steps to prosecute Palestinian killers of Americans, and instead going to bat for a Palestinian-American terrorist who tried to kill Israelis, Obama is doing just that.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
30 November '16..

After years of silence, the Obama administration has finally spoken out about an American citizen who was killed in Israel.

There's just one catch. The focus of the administration's sudden concern is not one of the 141 Americans who have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists. It's a Palestinian-American terrorist who tried to murder Israelis.

On Feb. 26, Mahmoud Shalan, a Palestinian with U.S. citizenship, attempted to stab Israeli soldiers to death at a security checkpoint near Ramallah. The soldiers shot in self-defense, wounding Shalan. Israel Defense Forces doctors and Magen David Adom emergency response personnel administered first aid to the terrorist, but he died of his wounds.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel demanded that the Israeli government launch a full-scale investigation of the Shalan incident. For some reason, the embassy did not demand that the Palestinian Authority (PA) investigate why Shalan, who was a resident of PA territory, was trying to murder Israelis. Nor do I recall the U.S. embassy ever urging the PA to investigate when its own policemen have murdered American citizens in Israel. The embassy's concerns seem to be quite selective.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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One Goal. Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...But this warning is likely to fall on deaf ears in the waning Obama Administration, which obviously no longer shares the widespread concern among Arabs and Palestinians that Iran remains a major threat to stability and security in the region, including Israel. Perhaps the new US administration will see Iran and its machinations a bit more clearly. The alternative is allowing Iran and its proxy terror groups further to drench the region in blood.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
23 November '16..

The Iranians and Hamas are exploiting the final days of the Obama Administration to restore their relations and pave the way for Tehran to step up its meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general.

Emboldened by the nuclear deal framework with the world powers, Iran has already taken the liberty of interfering in the internal affairs of other Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenites and some Gulf countries.

It now appears that the Obama Administration's failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians' appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Thanks to the civil war in Syria, relations between Hamas and Iran have been strained over the past few years. Hamas's refusal to support the regime of Bashar Assad -- Iran's chief ally in the region -- has led the Iranians to suspend financial and military aid to the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. However, recent signs indicate that Iran and Hamas are en route to a kind of Danse Macabre -- a move that will undoubtedly allow Tehran to become a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Question. Did Obama’s “Daylight” with Israel Bring Peace? - by David Gerstman

...Abbas’s role as spoiler for the administration’s peace efforts gets too little attention. Getting the support of Obama, did not move Abbas to take any risks for peace. He simply took it as an excuse to do nothing an let the Americans pressure Israel. The daylight between the United States that Obama said was necessary to promote peace didn’t accomplish what he said it would.

David Gerstman..
Legal Insurrection..
21 November '16..

Early on in his first term, President Barack Obama suggested that in order to achieve peace between Israeli and the Palestinians, there needed to be more “daylight” between the United States and Israel.

Obama, according to a report on a meeting between the president and American Jewish leaders, said, referring to the Bush administration, “During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”

During Obama’s two terms in office, he made efforts to put daylight between his administration and Israel, and not just in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: in 2010 the administration harangued Netanyahu over a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem, the administration pursued the nuclear deal with Iran over Israeli objections, senior administration officials, on and off the record, have disparaged Netanyahu, and Obama is said to be considering a move in the UN to support Palestinian statehood.

Despite all this a final peace agreement does not appear any closer than it did in 2009.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Efrat, punishing good neighbors and the goal of a Jew-free state

...Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was bitterly criticized by the Obama administration for saying that by demanding the dismantling of all Jewish communities in the West Bank as well as parts of Jerusalem, the PA was demonstrating that its goal was a Jew-free state. His assertion that this demand amounted to ethnic cleansing was blasted as unhelpful to the cause of peace. What happened in Efrat this past week showed how right he was.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 October '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/why-punish-good-neighbors-palestinians-settlements/

What happened in Efrat, the city in the territories 12 miles from Jerusalem, was exactly what those who wish for peace in the Middle East say should be happening.

Palestinians were invited on Wednesday to visit the home of the mayor of Efrat to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot. The event was discussed in a Washington Post feature, which described a friendly gathering that demonstrated how people of good will could work to resolve differences. It also noted that some of the Arabs who were invited had declined to come out of fear that they would be seen as betraying the Palestinian cause. As it turns out, they were right. The next day the Palestinian Authority arrested four of the guests who attended the holiday celebration. As of Sunday, the four were still in custody and their families were seeking their release by publicly blaming the Jews for “tricking” them into breaking bread with their enemies. That’s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a nutshell.

During the weeklong Jewish festival of Tabernacles, Jews invite their friends and neighbors to dine in their Sukkahs, the temporary huts intended to recall the dwellings the Israelites lived in after their liberation from Egypt during their journey to the Promised Land. So what better way to promote coexistence for the Jews of Efrat, a town just south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, than to have local Palestinians come to the mayor’s sukkah where they could drink coffee and get to know their neighbors better?

Question. Why Did Obama Tell Abbas to Wait? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

...Asking the Palestinians to wait until after the election is a reflection of the fact that Obama knows any move against Israel would hurt Hillary Clinton. But with only 18 days to go until the election, friends of Israel–both Republicans and especially Democrats–need to use this time to speak up against any last minute betrayal of Israel. Once Clinton has defeated a floundering Donald Trump, Obama thinks he will finally be freed of any political constraints. Barring a strong stand by Clinton in which she tells Obama to back down, Israel should expect the worst.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
21 October '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/why-did-obama-tell-abbas-to-wait/

On the surface, the latest message to the Palestinian Authority from the Obama administration is no different from the past two decades of American policy: the U.S. will veto any resolution attacking Israel or demanding Palestinian independence without them first making peace with the Jewish state. But, as Haaretz reported, there was one significant caveat to the warning. They were told not to push for any such resolution until after the presidential election next month.

The “senior Palestinian official” who spoke of this message to Haaretz said PA leader Mahmoud Abbas had “no illusions and no expectations” that the U.S. wouldn’t veto any resolution they put forward. They also thought Washington might not have any plan of its own ready. “All we know is that there are ideas.” But the significance of those “ideas” is a function of the time frame enunciated by the administration.

If President Obama had no plans to use his last two months in office to launch some kind of a diplomatic initiative on the Middle East or to stick it to the Israelis and his longtime antagonist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then why would he even mention the election? Were the U.S. to keep faith with the Israelis, the Palestinians would just be told that there would be no change in American policy. Period. Abbas and the PA would be put on notice that, if they actually had any desire for peace or hope of future independence, they should do what they promised to do in the Oslo Accords: head back into direct negotiations with the Israelis.

In his eight years in office, President Obama has done everything he could to tilt the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction. Had they ever negotiated seriously with Israel, they know they could count on Obama to back their stands and to pressure Netanyahu mercilessly. But despite the president hammering the Israelis and demanding that they accept the 1967 borders as the starting point for talks, the Palestinians have never played ball with Obama. Instead, they have spent most of these years refusing to talk. They torpedoed the negotiations the only time they deigned to show up by making a pact with Hamas and seeking to make an end run around the Americans by going to the United Nations.