How Palestinians Lie to Europeans - Bassam Tawil

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by Bassam Tawil

The question, again, remains whether the international community will ever wake up to realize that Palestinian leaders are playing them for fools.

• In the eyes of Hamas and its supporters, it is fine for Palestinians to throw explosive devices and firebombs at soldiers, but it is completely unacceptable for the soldiers to defend themselves. According to the twisted logic of the Palestinian leaders, it all started when Israel fired back.
• Those who sent the Palestinians to clash with the Israeli soldiers along the border with the Gaza Strip are the only ones who bear responsibility for killing more than 150 Palestinians and injuring thousands of others.
• The goal the Palestinians have in mind is to see Israel gone. All of it. Mahmoud Abbas believes he can achieve this goal by waging a diplomatic war against Israel in the international community -- one aimed at delegitimizing and demonizing Israel and Jews.
• The question, again, remains whether the international community will ever wake up to realize that Palestinian leaders are playing them for fools. The European Parliament delegation that visited Ramallah is a good test case: What message will its members convey back at home: the truth about the ruthless and repressive Palestinian Authority, or the lies that were spoon-fed to them by Abbas and his friends?

In the days before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 27, his security forces were waging a massive crackdown on his critics and opponents in the West Bank, arresting more than 100 Palestinians. (UN Photo/Cia Pak)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) says it wants the international community to exert pressure on Israel to "halt violations against the Palestinians and international law." The demand was relayed to members of a delegation from the European Parliament who met on October 8 in Ramallah with PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. At the meeting, Hamdallah also renewed the PA's call for providing "international protection" for the Palestinians.

Hamdallah's appeal to the European Parliament representatives should be seen in the context of the PA leadership's ongoing campaign of lies and incitement against Israel. The appeal also smacks of hypocrisy and deceit.

Hamdallah is apparently referring to Israel's defensive measures along the border between the Gaza Strip, where thousands of Hamas supporters have been staging violent demonstrations since March 2018. As part of the Hamas-orchestrated protests, which are sometimes called the "March of Return," Palestinians have been infiltrating the border with Israel and hurling firebombs and explosive devices at Israeli soldiers. They have also been launching arson kites and booby-trapped balloons towards Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Hamdallah and his boss, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, believe that Israel has no right to defend itself against the campaign of terrorism waged by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip. In their eyes, it is fine for Palestinians to throw explosive devices and firebombs at soldiers, but it is completely unacceptable for the soldiers to defend themselves. According to the twisted logic of the Palestinian leaders, it all started when Israel fired back.

Those who sent the Palestinians to clash with the Israeli soldiers along the border with the Gaza Strip are the only ones who bear responsibility for killing more than 150 Palestinians and injuring thousands of others. The Hamas-engineered "March of Return" is nothing but a declaration of war on Israel. It is another phase in the Palestinian campaign of terrorism to force Israel to its knees. When suicide bombings and rockets do not achieve their goal of forcing Israel to submit, the Palestinians resort to incendiary kites and balloons, and to stabbings and shootings to achieve their goal.

The goal the Palestinians have in mind is to see Israel gone. All of it. Abbas believes he can achieve this goal by waging a diplomatic war against Israel in the international community -- one that is aimed at delegitimizing and demonizing Israel and Jews. His rivals in Hamas believe that Israel could and should be destroyed through terrorism and other acts of violence.

The PA prime minister's strategy of crying foul against Israel is part of a long-standing Palestinian tradition of rallying the world against Israel.

In fact, it is in keeping with the famous Arab saying: "He hit me and cried, he raced me to complain." This saying reflects the state of mind of the Palestinian leaders, according to which the perpetrator pretends to be the victim.

However, this is more than just pretending to be the victim. The approach of the Palestinian leaders is not only fraudulent, but also extraordinarily hypocritical.

While Hamdallah was complaining about Israeli "violations," his security forces in the West Bank were continuing their daily assaults on public freedoms, including freedom of the media. Just as the meeting was taking place in Ramallah, a Palestinian group published a report about large-scale human rights violations committed by Hamdallah's and Abbas's various security forces.

As the meeting was underway, Palestinian Authority security forces arrested yet another Palestinian journalist in the city of Hebron: Amer Abu Arafeh. The journalist, who was released 24 hours later, said his Palestinian interrogators tried to force him to give them the password to his Facebook page.

The European Parliament delegation were not made privy to a report about this latest assault on the Palestinian media during their meeting with the PA prime minister. This is not something that concerns them or the EU because the journalist was not targeted by Israel. Why should they open their mouths about arrest of a Palestinian journalist if Israel is not involved?

Nor did the European Parliament delegation hear about the report published by a group called The Committee of Families of Political Prisoners in the West Bank. The committee consists of families and relatives of Palestinians who are regularly and systematically targeted by the PA security forces, largely because of their affiliation with Palestinian opposition groups, including Hamas, or for openly criticizing Palestinian leaders.

The report, which was made public while the EU officials were taking in Hamdallah's accusations against Israel, charges the PA with intensifying its assaults on public freedoms in the West Bank. This is not the kind of account that Hamdallah would be interested in sharing with his European guests.

In its report, the committee says it has documented 685 assaults by the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank on public freedoms just during the month of September. The assaults include, among other things, massive arbitrary arrests and detentions, summons' for interrogation, raids on homes and confiscation of property. The report pointed out that this marked a dramatic increase in human rights violations compared with previous months.

According to the report, the PA security forces arrested more than 100 Palestinians in the days before Abbas delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 27. Abbas devoted large parts of his speech to condemning Israel, which he accused of "suffocating" the Palestinians and "undermining our serious efforts to build the institutions of our cherished state."

Abbas, however, refrained from mentioning to the UN General Assembly that while he was speaking, his security forces were waging a massive crackdown on his critics and opponents in the West Bank. As far as Abbas is concerned, this is not something that the world should know about. The evil he and others see is only on the Israeli side.

Back to the report, which neither Abbas nor his prime minister cares to share with the world. According to this report, among those arrested or detained during September are 37 university students, eight school teachers, seven journalists, 55 university faculty members and lecturers, five engineers and 23 merchants. The report also revealed that four Palestinian detainees have gone on hunger strikes in Palestinian prison to protest their illegal incarceration.

So, we are again witnessing an act of fraud and deception on the part of Abbas and his senior officials in Ramallah. Palestinian leaders have convinced themselves that they can continue to spread their lies to the world while hiding the truth about what is happening within their repressive and corrupt regime in the West Bank. They believe that, because of the world's silence, they can continue to lie to everyone all the time.

The question, again, remains whether the international community will ever wake up to realize that Palestinian leaders are playing them for fools. The European Parliament delegation that visited Ramallah is a good test case: What message will its members convey back at home: the truth about the ruthless and repressive PA, or the lies that were spoon-fed to them by Abbas and his friends?

Bassam Tawil is an Arab Muslim based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13112/palestinians-europeans-lies

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Normalizing Anti-Semitism in the US - Dr. Asaf Romirowsky

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by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky

Twenty-five years after the Oslo peace accords, the progressive Left, which now loudly dominates the Democratic Party, is walking around “with dead eyes, following orders” when it comes to the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sen. Cory Booker with attendee at Netroots Nation 2018 conference in New Orleans, August 2018, photo via @RealJamesWoods

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 974, October 12, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Anti-Semitism is growing increasingly normalized in American society, particularly in progressive circles. Today’s progressive Left, led by Bernie Sanders and others like him, is even further removed from the facts than the Democratic Party was under Clinton. One of the most pernicious effects of this normalization relates to the discourse on Israel.

In his 1940 film The Ghost Breakers, Bob Hope finds himself in Cuba facing a strange menace – zombies. An acquaintance explains, “A zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring,” to which Hope famously replies, “You mean like Democrats?”

Twenty-five years after the Oslo peace accords, the progressive Left, which now loudly dominates the Democratic Party, is walking around “with dead eyes, following orders” when it comes to the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Upstart Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried the “occupation of Palestine” during a television interview but was at a loss when pressed to explain what she actually meant.

Even a moderate Democrat like Cory Booker, previously close to the Jewish community, saw fit to pose with BDS representatives as a means of flaunting his progressive credentials. In general, the progressive view sees Jews not only as “white” but as racists and victimizers because of their presumed power. All this exemplifies the slow erosion of Israel’s status in American culture.

But the disconnect runs even deeper. Like Cortez, the children of the Oslo era don’t remember the negotiations in the 1990s, or then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for that matter, and have grown up on slogans with buzzwords like “occupation” and “intifada.” On the other hand, this generation, both in the Middle East and outside it, is extremely active online. In fact, 63% of Palestinian kids have access to the internet on a computer and 51% report they own a smartphone. The internet is already playing a significant role in their lives and what they are seeing is the Palestinian “resistance” against Israel, not Palestinian society suffering under Hamas or Palestinian Authority oppression.

The most ostentatious confrontations take place on Twitter and Facebook, where Palestinians sow allegations of destroyed villages and war crimes, going as far as claiming that Tel Aviv was founded on the ruins of invented villages. Instant gratification, yes. Honesty, not so much.

The same trends are evident in higher education, where there has been a notable increase in online classes. In such a setting, there is less opportunity for debate and discussion.

Our growing collective dependence on technology and social media is undeniable, but these trends – and the general tone of politics – reduce complex issues into sound bites and thereby drive polarization.

One of the major themes of Oslo was to generate trust through confidence-building measures. New mechanisms were put in place to ensure equal rights in employment and policing, and militia weapons were decommissioned under international supervision. The hope was to build a high level of trust through face-to-face interaction. Today’s social media-driven politics achieves the exact opposite of those confidence-building steps. We are left only with the option of parsing online discussions and debates in order to understand the general attitudes. The hard work of building trust is gone and in its place we are left with zombies blindly following slogans.

When Arafat rejected the Camp David II accord back in 2000, it devastated the liberal left-wing camp. They couldn’t understand how Arafat could reject the prospect of a real Palestinian state. Today’s progressive Left, led by Bernie Sanders and others like him, is further removed from the facts than the Democratic Party was under Clinton. They don’t understand that Palestinian nationalism never saw the conflict as one between two national groups with legitimate claims and aspirations. They fail to recognize that Arafat and his successors professed support for a two-state solution as a means of appeasing the West.

All of this has led to a steady normalization of anti-Semitism in American society, particularly in progressive circles. One of the most pernicious effects of this normalization relates to the discourse on Israel. A relentless misrepresentation of human rights violations, slanderous talk of Israeli “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” and bitter attacks on Israelis, their international supporters, and the peace process itself have taken a massive toll on American civil discourse.

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This article was published by Israel Hayom on September 18, 2018.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Dr. Asaf Romirowsky is the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/antisemitism-united-states/

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Rebuilding Syria: The Responsibility Principle - Malcolm Lowe

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by Malcolm Lowe

Foreign interveners who have caused the most destruction in Syria call upon the rest of the world to foot the bill for rebuilding what they themselves have demolished.

• One is amazed by the audacity wherewith those foreign interveners who have caused the most destruction in Syria call upon the rest of the world to foot the bill for rebuilding what they themselves have demolished. So the First Clause of the Responsibility Principle is that those foreign countries which intervened in Syria to pursue their own political aims – primarily Iran, the Russian Federation and Turkey – should pay up to rebuild everything that they destroyed.
• The Second Clause of the Responsibility Principle is that any other country or international factor should condition any further financial assistance upon the replacement of the current Syrian regime with a plausible alternative, be it through free elections or the installation of a temporary international regime, followed by Nuremberg-type trials of the chief criminals of the current regime and the repatriation and resettlement of all refugees without any form of discrimination. The Russian Federation has the military power to keep Assad the titular president of Syria forever, but it cannot expect the rest of the world to pay for such a Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meet in Ankara, Turkey, on April 4, 2018. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

Twice during 2018, the presidents of Iran, Russia and Turkey met to discuss their various interests in Syria. On both occasions, their concluding joint statement called upon the rest of the world to assist in repairing the damage caused by the ongoing Syrian civil war, in which they had intervened on behalf of one faction or another. In their Joint Statement of April 4, the presidents:

"... Called upon the international community, particularly the UN and its humanitarian agencies, to increase its assistance to Syria by sending additional humanitarian aid, facilitating humanitarian mine action, restoring basic infrastructure assets, including social and economic facilities, and preserving historical heritage;"

Identical wording was included in their Final Statement of July 31.
One is amazed by the audacity wherewith those foreign interveners, who have caused the most destruction in Syria, call upon the rest of the world to foot the bill for rebuilding what they themselves have demolished. All the more so, given that after both meetings Russia resumed its bombing and Iran its land attacks in parts of Syria that had been declared "de-escalation zones" in earlier agreements that also included the United States. The Russian defense ministry indeed reported this August that its air force has killed "over 86,000 militants," a figure that -- whether or not it includes innocent civilians -- forms a substantial proportion of the total deaths in the civil war.

For the moment, the determination of Turkey to prevent this happening in Idlib, the last major area defying the regime of Bashar al-Assad, has postponed a further wave of ruthless bombings, targeting of hospitals and slaughter of hapless civilians. Turkey itself, however, is responsible for its needless military assault upon the Afrin area, leading to destruction of buildings and a mass flight of civilians.

Afrin was previously largely spared from the afflictions of the rest of Syria and provided a refuge for hundreds of thousands from elsewhere, thanks to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia that Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hates for domestic political reasons. After driving out the Kurds of Afrin, Turkey installed there an Islamist militia that rules by Sharia law and forces religious minorities such as Yazidis to convert to Islam .

Before making any appeals to the rest of the world, those foreign countries that intervened in Syria to pursue their own political aims -- primarily Iran, the Russian Federation and Turkey -- should pay up to rebuild everything that they destroyed. This we call the First Clause of the Responsibility Principle.

On August 26, 2018, Iran's Defense Minister arrived in Damascus and proclaimed that the aim of his visit was "the expansion of bilateral cooperation in the new conditions of Syria's arrival at the stage of reconstruction" and that "we are hopeful that we can have active participation in the reconstruction of Syria." The next day, however, it transpired that he had come to sign an agreement to rebuild the Syrian army and Syria's military industry. In short, yes, Iran is committed to rebuilding Syria, but understood as rebuilding the Assad regime's ability to suppress the country's Sunni Muslim majority as in the good old days before the civil war.

What, then, of the involvement of the United States and its coalition allies? This, too, included destruction of buildings and the death of civilians, especially during the recapture of the "capital" of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the 2017 Battle of Raqqa. There are two big differences.

First, Iran, Russia and Turkey intervened to impose their will upon the local Syrian population, which was rightly unwilling to tolerate further the decades-long tyranny of the Assad family; they also drove out much of that population from their homes. The American-led coalition, on the contrary, intervened to restore the local population to their homes and free it from the foreign rule of ISIS. Its role was to back up the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed of local Kurds and Arabs, which themselves did almost all of the fighting on land.

Second, the Obama administration already promised the SDF that there would be American funds to help in the reconstruction of their homes and lives after the expulsion of ISIS. This is a case in which the Trump administration would be well advised to keep the promises of its predecessor. Moreover, the United States can make a case for pressing its Arab allies to supply the bulk of the necessary finance, while the American role would be to guarantee a security umbrella under which that finance is duly spent.

The biggest question, however, is the conditions under which the world at large, including countries that played no role whatsoever in the Syrian tragedy, can be expected to finance reconstruction. These conditions must be drastic.

To begin with, there can be no question of using international finance to reconstruct the prewar Syrian regime. The Assads have run a police state even more brutal and deadly than Stalinist Russia. In the latter, at least, the identity of prisoners sent to the Gulag was known. In Syria, people simply vanished from one day to another, never to return except occasionally as bodies that had "died from natural causes." Also during the civil war, the Assad regime has probably killed far more people in its prisons than ISIS did in the areas under its control. According to July 26 report in the Washington Post:

"The Syrian government has begun issuing death notices for political detainees at an unprecedented rate, according to groups that monitor the prisons, in an effort to resolve the fate of thousands of missing Syrians as the regime prevails in its civil war. Since the spring, government registry offices have released hundreds of these notifications. Many of the notices report that prisoners have been dead since the early years of the conflict."

Thus the first condition for international finance must be the replacement of the Syrian regime. A meeting in August 2018 held under United Nations auspices reported:

"Discussions focused on estimations related to the volume of destruction in physical capital and its sectoral distribution, which according to ESCWA experts reached over $388 billion US dollars, while the actual physical cost of destruction was close to 120 billion dollars. These figures do not include human losses resulting from deaths or the loss of human competences and skilled labor due to displacement, which were considered the most important enablers of the Syrian economy." (Bold type in the original.)

It is unthinkable that sums of that magnitude could be spent on restoring Bashar al-Assad to his former ignominy. If that were not enough reason, one can read here how Assad has wickedly misused such relief money as has reached Syria.

If free elections cannot soon be organized, there may be a need for temporary international mandate to govern Syria. Compare Iraq. Despite the opprobrium showered upon President George W. Bush and his allies, it must be conceded that Iraq is today the only major Arab country where the mass of the population has accepted that its government must be subject to an elected parliament. What is needed is the current result of international intervention in Iraq while avoiding the mistakes that were made along the way.

The second condition is to bring the chief criminals of the Assad regime to trial. The means for doing this already exist. An April 2016 article in the New Yorker describes an organization that, taking the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis as a model, has gathered all the evidence required. Says the article:

In the past four years, people working for the organization have smuggled more than six hundred thousand government documents out of Syria, many of them from top-secret intelligence facilities. The documents are brought to the group's headquarters, in a nondescript office building in Western Europe, sometimes under diplomatic cover. There, each page is scanned, assigned a bar code and a number, and stored underground. A dehumidifier hums inside the evidence room; just outside, a small box dispenses rat poison.
Upstairs, in a room secured by a metal door, detailed maps of Syrian villages cover the walls, and the roles of various suspects in the Syrian government are listed on a whiteboard. Witness statements and translated documents fill dozens of binders, which are locked in a fireproof safe at night...
The commission's work recently culminated in a four-hundred-page legal brief that links the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coördinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives, who reported the successes of their campaign to their superiors in Damascus. The brief narrates daily events in Syria through the eyes of Assad and his associates and their victims, and offers a record of state-sponsored torture that is almost unimaginable in its scope and its cruelty.

The third condition is that all the Syrians displaced by the war, whether within the country, in neighboring countries or further afield, must be enabled to return to their homes. It has been rumored that Assad wants to obstruct the return of as many Sunnis Muslims as possible in order to make it easier for his Alawite minority to regain and even strengthen its domination of the country. This must not happen.

Those three conditions, put together, constitute the Second Clause of the Responsibility Principle: Any other country or international factor should condition any further financial assistance upon the replacement of the current Syrian regime with a plausible alternative, be it through free elections or the installation of a temporary international regime, followed by Nuremberg-type trials of the chief criminals of the current regime and the repatriation and resettlement of all refugees without any form of discrimination.

During a recent visit to Germany, Russian President Vladimir Russia "called on Europe to contribute financially to the reconstruction of Syria to allow millions of refugees to return home." The same report claims that Russia had suggested "that the United States and Russia form a joint group to finance infrastructure renovation in Syria," a suggestion that "was met with an icy reception" in Washington. Rightly so. Cooperation between the two superpowers is theoretically the most effective way of establishing order and a decent form of life in Syria, but it must be conditioned on the elimination of the Assad regime and bringing its major criminals to justice. If Putin could concede so much and President Trump could respond with a turnabout like the one with North Korea, the way would be open.

Let us put the matter more plainly. The Russian Federation has the military power to keep Assad the titular president of Syria forever, but it cannot expect the rest of the world to pay for such a Syria. So the Russian government has to ask itself whether it also has the economic power to pay the immense bill for rebuilding Syria alone. Nothing can be expected from its partner Iran because the Iranian regime's involvement in Syria has already sent it hurtling toward bankruptcy, thanks to Trump's reinstatement of sanctions. Is Russia economically strong enough to avoid following Iran along that path?

The most that Russia can plausibly demand in return for the world's money is that the regime that replaces Assad must honor Russia's lease on its bases in Syria. Why Russia even needs such bases, apart from spurious prestige, is another question, which Russians can ponder for themselves at leisure once Assad has gone.

Malcolm Lowe is a Welsh scholar specialized in Greek Philosophy, the New Testament and Christian-Jewish Relations.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13074/syria-reconstruction-responsibility

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Trump Promised America First – and That's Exactly What We’re Getting - Larry Alton

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by Larry Alton

Less than two years into the presidency for Donald Trump, we're already reaping the rewards of a president who puts America's interests before the interests of others.

Make America Great Again. President Donald Trump's rallying cry during the campaign season a couple of years ago will forever have a place in history. To him, it was more than hyperbole. He really did promise to restore America and prioritize the nation's needs. So far, he's doing a pretty good job.

What Does It Mean to Make America Great Again?

Let's briefly take a look at two quotes:

This country needs a new administration with a renewed dedication to the dream of America, an administration that will give that dream new life, and make America great again.

And...

I ask you to give me your hands and your hearts. To give me your prayers and your help. I believe that together we can make America great again. And with your help, your heart, your devotion, and your efforts, we can build a community of hope that will inspire the world.

Do you know who made these statements?
If you answered Donald Trump, you're mistaken. The first quote is attributed to Ronald Reagan in a Labor Day speech in 1980. The latter quote belongs to none other than Bill Clinton in his 1991 presidential announcement speech.

At the time, these quotes were met with astounding positivity. People on both sides of the party line had no issue with these words of hope and positivity. Yet, over the past few years, as Trump has made these words the battle cry of middle-class America, the notion has arisen that returning American to its greatness is somehow an offensive idea.

"That message where 'I'll give you America great again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?" Clinton said during the 2016 campaign season as his wife went head to head with Trump for the presidency. "What it means is 'I'll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I'll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.'"

See, somewhere along the way, leftists decided they'd flip the script on what it means to make America great again. Instead of acknowledging what it genuinely means – to restore America's financial stability, business growth, national security, and social standing in the world – they've tried to turn it into a racist statement full of hatred and vitriol.

While Democrats have spent the last couple of years in an echo chamber – yelling "racist" every time Republicans put forth an America-first policy – they've actually become tone-deaf. From the outside looking in, they don't seem to want what's best for America. Instead, they intensely desire to be "right." To them, being right is all about proving that, somehow, Donald Trump is a racist mistake of a president. But at this point, there's nothing to suggest that this is true. In fact, an objective look at the accomplishments under his leadership proves the exact opposite.

Three Ways President Trump Has Restored America's Greatness

While liberals try to make a racket and clamor that Trump and the Republican Party are stirring up hate and oppressing others, the current administration has actually made life a whole lot better for Americans across every socioeconomic stratum – in two years, no less!

Let's take a brief look at just a few of the early victories Trump has accomplished in his pursuit of returning greatness to America:

1. Buy American and Hire American

On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed the Buy American and Hire American Executive Order, which has the goal of creating higher wages and employment rates for American workers, as well as to protect the economic interests of America-first companies by rigorously enforcing and administering immigration laws. The order also directs the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with some other agencies, to push forth policies that ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled beneficiaries.

As All American Reviews shows, there's plenty of diversity and quality in American-made products and brands. From furniture and clothing to sporting goods and tools, consumers have plenty of choices. The more the government incentivizes product manufacturing to stay home, the more opportunity there will be for consumers to buy goods that reinvest into the American economy. So far, so good.

2. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement

"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," President Trump said at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to announce the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.

One of Trump's first big executive orders as president was to remove America from the terrible Paris Agreement that President Obama dubiously "backdoored" his way into. In doing so, he saved the U.S. economy an estimated $3 trillion over the next several decades, saved as many as 6 million industrial-sector jobs, and saved taxpayers $3 billion in an Obama-era slush fund that was created without consulting Congress. In other words, he put America first again.

3. Enhanced Vetting Processes to Secure Borders

While it's received a lot of negative press – largely as a result of misleading reports by the national media – more rigorous vetting processes have made our borders safer by making it harder for terrorists and transnational criminals to legally enter the country.

As Whitehouse.gov said in a release at the end of last year, "[a]ll foreign countries are now required to share critical information with the United States about their nationals, so we know who is entering our country, or face consequences. To enhance our security, the Administration has raised the baseline of security cooperation, and most countries have complied."

Not only have fewer criminals entered the country, but those who have already infiltrated the borders are being dealt with appropriately. Whitehouse.gov noted that, through the end of 2017, nearly 800 MS-13 gang members had been arrested stateside, while 4,000 more had been arrested and charged in their native countries (in partnership with United States law enforcement).

Continuing to Make America Great

We're less than two years into what could be a four- or eight-year presidency for Donald Trump, yet we're already reaping the rewards of a president who puts America's interests before the interests of others. His pro-U.S. policies show that making America great doesn't have to happen at the expense of certain minority classes. In reality, it's about putting Americans first (all of them). Even though some people are blinded by hate and a need to be right, that doesn't change the fact that progress has been made.

Larry Alton

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/trump_promised_america_first__and_thats_exactly_what_were_getting.html

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A Stealth Palestinian Running for Congress? - Pedro Gonzalez

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by Pedro Gonzalez

Ammar Campa-Najjar’s questionable campaign.

Reprinted from American Greatness.

Running for Congress in California’s 50th district against Duncan Hunter Jr., Ammar Campa-Najjar has been described as a working-class progressive, a “Latino Arab-American,” and a “Palestinian-Mexican.”

Though he has been described and describes himself many things, “transparent” is not one of them. So it came as a shock when it was revealed that Campa-Najjar’s grandfather was Abu Yousef al-Najjar—the “leader and operational head” of Black September, a notorious Palestinian terrorist cell. Black September carried out the abduction, torture, and murder of 11 Israelis and one West German police officer at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Yousef joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1951, and later helped organize the Fatah, formerly known as the Palestinian Liberation Movement, as a deputy to Yasser Arafat. He also coordinated Fatah’s military arm, Al-’Asifah, served on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was a member of the Palestinian National Congress. Not exactly a small fish.

In 2014, a video surfaced of Yousef posthumously being awarded the Grand Star of Honor Medal by President Mahmoud Abbas for his martyrdom as a member of the Fatah, of which Black September was a clandestine component. Yousef was honored along with Kamal Nasser and Kamal Odwan, a leader in the PLO killed in a 1973 counterterrorism operation. Yousef, like Odwan, was a key player in the Munich massacre.

“The leader of the Palestinian State,” says the unidentified speaker in the video, “honors the martyr Mohammed Yousif Al Najar (Abu Yousif). He is honored for his efforts and willingness to sacrifice for the cause of the Palestinian state.”

Campa-Najjar tried to hide this connection, and disturbingly he then downplayed the atrocity that was the Munich massacre, saying:

For the sake of the victims, I hoped this tragedy wouldn’t be politicized. But if these old wounds must be re-opened, then I pray God gives purpose to their unspeakable pain. I pray that purpose is to see peace prioritized by my generation of Palestinians, Israelis and the whole of humanity.

In and of itself, Campa-Najjar’s family connection to Yousef al-Najjar is not damning. He didn’t ask to be born into this lineage and, in any event, the events in Munich happened well before Campa-Najjar was born. He never knew his grandfather.

But given this statement, voters in the staunchly supportive Navy town of San Diego have a right to wonder if Campa-Najjar carries any sympathy for the atrocity his grandfather committed or for the cause in the name of which it was proclaimed to have been carried out. It’s not unfair to ask the question and his “answer” (such as it is) is not satisfactory.

“Tragedy” implies that no one is to blame. It sounds so much more benign than “murder,” “atrocity,” or “massacre.” The murders in Munich, an atrocity facilitated by Campa-Najjar’s grandfather, are accurately described as a massacre. Palestinian terrorists castrated Yossef Romano, one of the Israeli victims, in front of his teammates before executing him.

Saying that innocent civilians should never be killed is not the same as specifically denouncing the Munich massacre. Does Campa-Najjar harbor sympathy for the cause his grandfather “served”? He should answer that question clearly and forthrightly.

Between the infamous grandfather and the ambitious grandson, however, there is a pronounced gap: Who is Campa-Najjar’s father?

The young Democrat seemed keen on evading this question and received aid from Californian’s old-line establishment media in dodging that question. The San Diego Union-Tribune, for example, took the unusual step of endorsing Campa-Najjar before the primaries, while labeling talk of his family history as “attacks” rooted in racism, and quoted his supporters saying that it is “ridiculous” to inquire about his family ties.

Anyone who took the trouble to locate Campa-Najjar’s father would understand why his son left him out of the story. The only clue was Campa-Najjar’s claim that his father returned to Gaza in the 1990s to “help Yasser Arafat lead a secular unity government,” ostensibly to promote “peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.” Arafat? That man presents as doing many things but none of them involve “seeking peace with Israel.”

An Envoy to Norway
 
In February 2013, Norwegian state-owned TV, Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK), ran a special report on anti-Semitic “hate incitement and terror glorification” by the Palestinian Authority.

The report was based on the findings of Palestine Media Watch (PMW), a Middle Eastern research institute, whose operational focus is to monitor the messages that leaders from the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas, promulgate. Based on PMW’s research presented to the Norwegian Parliament, reporters illustrated the connection between the PA’s promotion of hatred and terror glorification and Norwegian funding of the PA to the tune of roughtly 300 million kroner per year, or $52,628,700:

[Palestinian] children grow up learning that Jews are “Satan with a tail”… Adults hear that Jews are evil and not to be trusted. It is perhaps not surprising that the [Palestinian] hatred is growing. The messenger is a [PA] government that receives large amounts [of money] from Norway.

The Palestinian ambassador who went on the record to dismiss the findings as an Israeli conspiracy of “rumors and exaggerations” was Yasser al-Najjar, son of Abu Yousef al-Najjar, and the father of Campa-Najjar. “We are present and we have experience,” said Campa-Najjar’s father in response to PMW and the Norwegian government’s findings, “praise Allah, in dealing with the counter-information spread by Israel.”

Yasser al-Najjar spun the report as proof not of Palestinians using aid money to promote anti-Semitism, but of an “incitement campaign” by Israel, the goal of which was to “stop Norwegian aid to the Palestinian people and the PA.”

Norway upgraded Palestinian diplomatic representation to the “Palestinian Mission” in 2011, and al-Najjar represented both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. In the United States, a career ambassador is the civilian equivalent of a four-star general.

According to his LinkedIn profile, al-Najjar served in this capacity until April 2018. Did Barack Obama know this when he brought Ammar Campa-Najjar into the White House?

Al-Najjar says that he was in the room when Israeli commandos raided his father’s abode in retaliation for his role in the Munich massacre. He claims that his mother, Campa-Najjar’s grandmother, was killed when she lept in front of gunfire.

In 2016, Campa-Najjar wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Washington Post that his father “saw both his parents gunned down right in front of him when he was only 11 years old,” but failed to mention why his grandfather was killed in either column. The story of his grandfather’s involvement in the Munich massacre did not break until 2018, much to the Democratic candidate’s chagrin. It would seem, then, that Campa-Najjar was playing for sympathy while hiding relevant facts.

Following the death of his parents, Yasser al-Najjar was adopted by the king of Morocco and lived in Egypt until 1981, when he moved to San Diego.

The United States and Israel are close allies and their intelligence agencies often work in tandem. U.S. government officials and voters alike had good cause to wonder how the son of a high-profile terrorist managed to enter the United States.

Why Gaza?
 
Campa-Najjar has mentioned living in Gaza during his childhood, but has never explained why the family moved there from sunny San Diego. He has also claimed that his father “took off” when he was six, but a profile on Heavy.com complicates this claim: “When Campa-Najjar was nine years old, the family moved to Gaza. They spent three years living there.” The Huffington Post reports that “Campa-Najjar’s family left San Diego for Gaza when he was 9 years old,” while the Los Angeles Times reports that “when Campa-Najjar was 5, his father returned to Gaza, leaving his wife and two sons in San Diego County. Three years later, she and the boys moved to Gaza.” Still, Campa-Najjar’s own op-ed in the Washington Post confuses the claim he made with NPR: “In 1993, my father asked the family to relocate to the Middle East for a few years . . .” Did Yasser al-Najjar leave on his own? Did he take the family with him or send for them later?

What is certain is that Campa-Najjar’s father returned to Gaza and the family went with him. An NPR profile of his father from 2003 provides more illumination.

Campa-Najjar’s father told NPR that when the Palestinian Authority was created and Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza, he moved his family, including the young Campa-Najjar, known then as Ammar Yasser Najjar, to Gaza to follow Arafat. As an aside, court documents show that Campa-Najjar legally changed his name from “Ammar Yasser Najjar” to the more Latino sounding, “Ammar Joseph Campa-Najjar,” on June 12, 2018. Some have speculated that this was a move to pander to Latino voters, and to obscure his family ties to the Palestinian Authority.

According to NPR, Campa-Najjar’s father returned to Gaza because “he wanted to fulfill his father’s dream of returning to Palestine.”

The regime that Campa-Najjar’s father left the United States to serve was indicted by Amnesty International for “serious human rights abuses,” including “unlawful killings and “extrajudicial executions,” and exploited the Oslo Accords to obtain weapons, training, and consolidate political power in its war against Israel.

“I can hate the Israelis or Ehud Barak forever, you know,” al-Najjar told NPR, “and I’m entitled to—I never supported Israel and will never do it, either.” So much for “promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.”

According to a Washington Post column that includes a brief profile of al-Najjar, he “is proud of his father (Campa-Najjar’s grandfather) and refuses to accept that killing [Israeli] athletes was more repugnant than the violence of Israeli occupation over the years.” Campa-Najjar’s father isn’t exactly remorseful about the Munich massacre, either.

Speaking of his father the martyr, al-Najjar went on: “We will never measure up to him and people like him. But the nature of the struggle has changed dramatically. Today it’s a worse struggle: coexistence.”

Factional Trouble
 
Forward to 2018, and now al-Najjar’s son, also appears in Post columns.

“Only in America can the son of a Hispanic woman from the barrio and an Arab man,” wrote Campa-Najjar in an op-ed, “from an occupied territory have the freedom to reimagine his life and pursue his dreams.” What Campa-Najjar omits is that his father left the United States to “pursue his dreams” in Gaza as a servant of the late Arafat, like Abu Yousef al-Najjar before him, in a brutal regime. Why would Campa-Najjar mislead and evade about the years he spent in Gaza with his father?

Al-Najjar, like Campa-Najjar, claims to seek peace with Israel, but Al-Najjar’s reaction to a 2009 incident is revealing.

Three years prior to the Norwegian report, al-Najjar was implicated in what appeared to be an attempt by Hamas to frame him as sympathetic to Israel. Hamas and Fatah are mortal enemies, both vying for the hearts and minds of Palestinians.

In a letter published on a pro-Hamas Arab-language site, an “ambassador al-Najjar” is presented writing sympathetically in support of Israel and the Jewish people. “Regardless of the validity of this document,” responded one pro-Hamas reader, “it is no surprise that Abbas’s ambassadors are not worthy of representing the Palestinian people.”

For this stunt, the real al-Najjar received a slew of death threats. He went on categorically to deny havingauthored the pro-Israel letter. Translated versions of the article are available here and here. Curiously, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet makes no mention of Yousef’s involvement in the Munich massacre, referring to him as an “activist,” and to Israeli counterrorism operators as “an Israeli death squadron” that killed al-Najjar’s parents.

“If people believe the letter, then I can understand that they react with anger,” said Campa-Najjar’s father. “You can imagine someone who lost their children in the war, and then they will hear that one of their own is a traitor. Obviously they get angry. But it’s also not true. I never supported Israel and will never do it, either.”

Once again this raises the question: If according to al-Najjar goodwill to Israel is tantamount to treason, how then can Campa-Najjar claim his father promoted peace between Israel and Palestine?

Campa-Najjar and the Obama Administration
 
Of course, besides being the progeny of high-profile Palestinians, Campa-Najjar’s other claim to fame is that of having worked as an Obama administration Labor Department official. Indeed, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Campa-Najjar’s “political history is rooted in Barack Obama’s presidency.”

In 2012, one year after his father’s diplomatic mission in Norway was upgraded, Campa-Najjar served as deputy regional field director for Obama’s reelection campaign. Incidentally, Obama drew criticism that year for his apparent reluctance to endorse a moment of silence at the London Olympics on the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre.

The begrudged show of support came one month after Obama announced that he was unfreezing a $192 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority, which Congress had previously blocked after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sought U.N. recognition of Palestine.

As the Norwegians discovered, but Campa-Najjar’s father denied, aid money to Palestine ends up funding anti-Semitic propaganda or worse, subsidizing the families of terrorists.

Starting in the 1960s, the PLO has delivered payments to the families of those who have lost a member “in the fight against Israel.” This is not just payments to hapless victims in the struggle between Israel and the PLO, these payments also go to terrorists. The program effectively incentivizes terrorism by paying off the families of those killed while attacking Israelis, and families of prisoners jailed for attacking Israelis. The Palestinian Authority took over the program in 1998.

Base monthly pay to families of every Palestinian killed by Israel is $350, with an additional $100 if the person was married, and an additional $50 per child. To families of Palestinians jailed in Israel, $350 for those jailed for five years or less, $1,312 for sentences between five and 10 years, and $2,624 for those jailed 30 years or longer—with an additional $131 per month if the person is married, and $52 for each child per month.

Aid money from the United States has been found to be tied up in this payment system. Apart from releasing $194 million in Palestinian aid in 2012, Obama quietly—and over Republican protests—delivered a generous $221 million to the Palestinian Authority in the last hours of his presidency. Trump has since appropriately frozen aid to the Palestinians. Will Campa-Najjar push to thaw American taxpayer money for this purpose?

Lingering Questions
 
When President Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Palestinians predictably reacted with violence. Some of the Palestinians wounded in those clashes with Israelis probably found themselves at Martyr Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, named in honor of Campa-Najjar’s grandfather.

The dust from those clashes may have settled, but many questions linger.

If the Obama Administration knew about Campa-Najjar’s background, was he taken on because of his father’s political clout in Gaza? Forget running for Congress. If today the son of a Russian ambassador to Norway, for example, was working in the White House—in any capacity—that would be the subject of a frontpage story about foreign influence in American politics.

It’s bad enough that his grandfather orchestrated the Munich massacre, but Campa-Najjar’s father feels no remorse for that atrocity, has continued to demonize Jews, and happens to have served as a high-ranking PLO-PA official. What is Campa-Najjar’s opinion of his father these days?

As far as his campaign website is concerned, Campa-Najjar may as well be the product of immaculate conception. He has left his father squarely out of the picture. Yet, here he is praising his father on social media in this Father’s Day picture in 2015.

Why is Campa-Najjar being so evasive and misleading about the relationship with his father? Did then-Ambassador al-Najjar come and go as he pleased into the United States? Or did Campa-Najjar make periodic trips to Gaza? And if the latter, for what purpose?

This is information that should have been disclosed earlier on in his congressional bid. But the Najjar clan evidently wants to keep all of this hidden—and the media are content to oblige them. Thus does democracy “die in darkness,” as the Washington Post likes to say, even as they turn off the lights. Could any Republican survive this kind of cover-up?

It is true that Campa-Najjar has rather feebly distanced himself from his grandfather, but what of his father? Campa-Najjar’s father sees his grandfather, the mastermind of the Munich massacre, as a hero and shares his anti-Semitic views. Campa-Najjar has yet to publicly denounce Yasser al-Najjar. Will he now?

If Campa-Najjar goes to Congress, will he push to reinstate the PLO’s mission so recently (and appropriately) shuttered in our nation’s capital?

Considering his familiarity with extremism, is Campa-Najjar’s instinct to denounce President Trump’s travel moratorium (for which, we should remember, Obama laid the groundwork) as “immoral” (it isn’t) and “unconstitutional” (it’s not) related to his upbringing? Do his family ties factor into his positions on issues related to the Middle East? Has his father influenced that outlook? If so, is this not a conflict of interest born of foreign influence? And don’t voters have a right to know?

Will Campa-Najjar attempt to act as a sort of Palestinian ambassador in Congress? Will he argue for the PA funding that Trump has, for good reason, denied?

Campa-Najjar calls for “country over party,” but considering the emphasis that he places on himself as a diverse “Palestinian-Mexican” and “Latino Arab,” can Americans expect him to place country over identity politics?

Why have news outlets such as NPR and the Washington Post been mute about Campa-Najjar’s relations with a hostile foreign government? They know who his father is, who his grandfather was, yet say nothing. Actually, Politico and the New York Times, too, have come to the defense of Campa-Najjar—both publications have characterized his opponent Rep. Duncan Hunter’s attacks as baseless, Islamophobic, “racist,” and “desperate.” Let’s consider this for a moment.

The Times, for example, suggests that Rep. Hunter is wrong to fear that Campa-Najjar is a potential “terrorist sympathizer and national security risk.” But based on what we know—that his father, the former Palestinian ambassador to Norway, unapologetically celebrates grandfather Najjar and is hostile to Israel, an American ally—how can the Times suggest there is no legitimacy to Hunter’s concerns?

If one is congenial toward an organization that uses terrorism to advance an agenda, is that not sympathizing with terrorists? If one has concealed (going so far as changing one’s name) a connection to a high-profile foreign dignitary, does that not warrant concern for a potential national security risk? If the media does not like these “attacks” on one of their approved candidates, they have no one to blame but themselves for not asking the questions in the first place.

Note, I’m not making any accusations—I’m simply asking the questions that the media and Campa-Najjar’s allies seem perfectly content to brush aside. Is this not peculiar in an era during which Americans are implored to check under their beds at sunset for foreign meddling? Voters might expect a candidate for Congress to disclose this sort of information, as well as not having to worry about establishment media looking the other way.

Before Campa-Najjar’s grandfather was killed, he was interviewed by L’Orient-Le Jour, a prominent Beirut newspaper. “We plant the seeds, and the others will reap the harvest,” Yousef al Najjar said. He lamented that his generation of Palestinians wouldn’t be the one to defeat the Israelis, but remained hopeful that the future promised their destruction. “Most probably we’ll all die, killed because we are confronting a fierce enemy. But the youth will replace us.”

Campa-Najjar, too, has said that he intends to “sow the seeds” of “progress” in the “soil of hope.” Revolutionary poesy runs in the family.

It is yet unknown what sort of “seed” the grandson of Yousef is. What we do know for certain is that Campa-Najjar attacks his opponent for a breach of the public trust, even as he hides critical details about himself, including intimate connections to hostile foreign governments, from American voters.

Photo: Union-Tribune

Pedro Gonzalez is assistant editor of American Greatness and a Mount Vernon Fellow of the Center for American Greatness.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271588/stealth-palestinian-running-congress-pedro-gonzalez

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