The New York Times Incentivizes Hamas Violence - Alan M. Dershowitz

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by Alan M. Dershowitz

While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this.

• While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as faceless killing machines, without a single reference to the fire kites, terror tunnels, rockets or cross border explosive devices utilized by the Palestinians, or to the double war crime of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians by firing rockets from behind Palestinian civilians.
• These Israeli civilians are not occupiers or usurpers. They live in Israel proper not in occupied or disputed territory. This area was built from scratch by Israelis on barren desert land and the Israelis have a right to be protected from fire bombs and mobs determined to breach the protective fence. How would other nations respond to such threats? Certainly not by treating these dangerous mobs as peaceful protestors merely exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.
• The Times's absurd conclusion that the shooter may have committed a "war crime," ignores the law of war crimes.
• Contrast what Israel does with how the Palestinians treat terrorists who willfully target and kill Jewish children, women and other civilians. The Palestinian Authority pays their families rewards – in effect bounties -- for their willful acts of murder. Hamas promotes and lionizes terrorists who kill Jews. But you would not know any of that from reading the one-sided New York Times screed....All in all, it is a shockingly irresponsible report.

In the Sunday New York Times — the most widely read issue of the week -- the lead story was about a young Israeli soldier whose bullet ricocheted off the ground and killed a young Palestinian medic who had admitted to being a human shield and who was videoed throwing a smoke bomb. The next day— in the less well-read Monday issue — the Times reported on the murder and torture committed at the hands Afghan troops affiliated with and trained by the American CIA. The piece opens with the troops shooting and burning an entire family including a three-year-old girl. The number of deaths associated with these units (who at times were mistaken for ISIS) could not be verified but accounts put them at hundreds in one month. Apparently, the Times's editors believe that the Israeli story, involving one soldier who shot one Palestinian under questionable circumstances, deserves wider coverage than deliberate massacres perpetrated by Afghan troops trained by the CIA.

The report's bias is clear from the introduction of the article and persists throughout the reporting. These reporters constantly characterized as "protesters," large groups of Palestinians that include violent Hamas fighters who carry weapons and maps of civilian targets. The Times's reporters portray the "protestors'" goals as "risking their lives to make a point" or "to break through the fence and return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel." The goal of many of the Hamas fighters was, in actuality, to break through the fence and kidnap and kill Israeli civilians. The report accuses the Israelis of using "a policy that has taken the lives of nearly 200 Palestinians." Their biased reporting leaves the reader with the impression that all the people killed were civilians, although many were armed Hamas fighters. Even Hamas acknowledges that many of those killed were its combatant fighters.

Hamas Fighters Prepare To Shoot Against Israeli Targets - GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP - UNDATED: This handout photo from the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) group shows armed Hamas activists to prepare what appears to be homemade Qassam rockets that can be shot towards an Israeli settlements in a Gaza Strip. The mortar shells appear to be similar to those fired by Hamas and other military (Photo by Hamas via Getty Images)

While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as faceless killing machines, without a single reference to the fire kites, terror tunnels, rockets or cross border explosive devices utilized by the Palestinians, or to the double war crime of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians by firing rockets from behind Palestinian civilians. The goal of these Hamas-directed "protests" was to cross the border and kill or kidnap Israeli civilians using Palestinian civilians as human shields in order to maximize deaths of Palestinians so they can cry war crimes. We can see this play out in the IDF video which the Times characterizes as being "tendentiously edited." However, they fail to acknowledge that it accurately shows al-Najjar throwing a smoke bomb and declaring herself a human shield. Let the Times show the entire unedited video and have its readers decide whether it was fairly edited.

The report omits the trauma and wounds experienced by Israeli civilian residents who live near the fence. For days, the Israelis had lethal fire bombs, burning tires, and rocks hurled at them. These Israeli civilians are not occupiers or usurpers. They live in Israel proper not in occupied or disputed territory. This area was built from scratch by Israelis on barren desert land and the Israelis have a right to be protected from fire bombs and mobs determined to breach the protective fence. How would other nations respond to such threats? Certainly not by treating these dangerous mobs as peaceful protestors merely exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.

As it always does, Israel will fully investigate the circumstances leading to the death of al-Najjar. Reasonable people might agree or disagree with the outcome of any such investigation, but Israel has a good record of punishing soldiers who have exceeded their authority and engaged in improper use of lethal force. The Times's absurd conclusion that the shooter may have committed a "war crime," ignores the law of war crimes. Reasonable mistakes about who is or is not a combatant do not constitute a war crime. Moreover, the court that has jurisdiction over war crimes, the International Criminal Court, has no jurisdiction to investigate individual acts by soldiers if the nation to which they belong conducts reasonable investigations, as does Israel. Contrast what Israel does with how the Palestinians treat terrorists who willfully target and kill Jewish children, women and other civilians. The Palestinian Authority pays their families rewards – in effect bounties -- for their willful acts of murder. Hamas promotes and lionizes terrorists who kill Jews. But you would not know any of that from reading the one-sided New York Times screed.

Israel makes mistakes and sometimes overreacts in self-defense. But a biased one-sided story in the Times only encourages Hamas to use more human shields so as to increase civilian deaths and make the false case for war crimes. As long as the Times and other media continue to approach this issue in a biased manner, we can expect to see the cycle of Hamas's criminal behavior continue. All in all, it is a shockingly irresponsible report.

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Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump, Hot Books, 2019. Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13498/the-new-york-times-incentivizes-hamas-violence

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Trump's Space Force: We Win, They Lose - Chriss Street

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by Chriss Street

President Trump is finally rolling out America's first integrated terrestrial and space-based system to defend against missile attacks.

President Trump’s establishment of the ‘Space Force’ as a branch of the U.S. military recognizes that America is on the verge of “We win, and they lose” strategic dominance. 

In the 36 years since President Ronald Reagan launched his Strategic Defense Initiative, referred to by critics as “Star Wars,” the United States has invested about $254 billion in a series of precision guidance weapons and anti-missile technologies. Following Clinton and Obama administration opposition, President Trump is finally rolling out America’s first integrated terrestrial and space-based system to defend against missile attacks. 

President Trump on June 18, 2018 directed the Department of Defense to immediately begin the process to establishing ‘Space Force’ as the sixth branch of the armed forces. The directive ordered an acceleration of space technology and development initiatives; developing and fielding new next-generation capabilities for national security; creating a unified combatant command, to improve, evolve, and plan space warfighting.

The White House release was first thought to be a response to President Vladimir Putin releasing a video in March to a conference of military officials showcasing Russia’s new array of hypersonic missiles that can fly at Mach 20 and carry nuclear weapons that are 6500 times more powerful than the U.S. bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Putin claimed Russian nuclear weapons are “absolutely invulnerable for any missile defense system.” 

But the TASS News Agency reported in August that Russia’s FSB state security arrested scientist Viktor Kudryavtsev for treason after conducting raids on two weapons laboratories that confirmed top secret files on its “Dagger” and “Avangard” hypersonic maneuverable re-entry vehicles that can deliver conventional or nuclear payloads had been leaked to NATO. TASS also reported another Russian hypersonic expert was convicted of leaking “a software system able to compute optimized aerodynamic characteristics of hypersonic aircraft containing state secrets” to the Chinese military.

The United States Air Force quietly began glide-testing for a Boeing autonomous spaceplane prototype built for NASA that looked like a miniature Challenger Space Shuttle in 1998. With the President George W. Bush withdrawing the U.S. from the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, the program was renamed the X-37 and transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Three autonomous X-37s were built and launched into low earth orbits during the Obama Administration, including an X-37B flight that lasted 717 days. A supposedly unarmed X-37B was launched by the Trump Administration on September 7, 2017 and was in an orbit that flew over North Korea early on January 4, 2019.

The Trump Administration announced in May of 2017 that DARPA awarded Boeing’s Southern California Phantom Works a contract to build XS-1 Phantom Express spaceplanes. The Pentagon required “aircraft-like” performance capability to conduct at least 10 flights in as many days. Potentially manned spaceplanes featuring vertical take-off and conventional runway landing are expected to test at the top-secret Area 51. 

For Space Force targeting, a SpaceX Falcon Block 5 reusable rocket launched the first of 10 Lockheed GPS 3 low-orbit satellites into a constellation orbit on December 23. To minimize vulnerability from Russian and Chinese anti-satellite efforts, the dual use civilian/military GPS 3 navigational tracking system features three times greater accuracy and up to eight times more anti-jamming capabilities than the existing GPS satellites.

The cyber-secure XS-1s and GPS 3 satellite network will be fully-integrated with Raytheon’s OCX next-generation terrestrial ground control anti-missile coverage can track multiple objects and extend coverage to hard-to-reach areas such as urban canyons and mountainous terrain.

The Trump Administration has not been trumpeting what appears to be America’s disruptive lead in ‘Star Wars’ capabilities. But DARPA commented:

"In an era of declining budgets and proliferating foreign threats to U.S. air and space assets, routine, affordable and responsive access to space is essential to enabling new military space capabilities and rapid reconstitution of space systems during crisis.”

As in much else, Donald Trump is leading way in defending America’s interests in space.


Chriss Street

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/trumps_space_force_we_win_they_lose.html

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The Racist, Anti-Semitic Black Left - John Perazzo

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by John Perazzo

How racial tribalism became the defining hallmark of the black Left.

In a recent interview on the popular radio show The Breakfast Club, Temple University professor and former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill affectionately referred to Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “my brother.” Moreover, Hill pushed back against whites who suggested that he and other black pundits should, in Hill's words, “throw [Farrakhan] away wholesale” because of the latter’s long history of incendiary racial rhetoric. Noting that no one had ever urged him to similarly distance himself from what he describes as “extreme” conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter when he was a Fox News contributor years ago, Hill now asks: “Why is only one set of people untouchable? And why does every black leader have to ritually denounce Farrakhan in order to sustain a position?”

Hill’s professed bewilderment vis-à-vis this alleged double standard is wholly unsurprising, in light of the very obvious fact that he, like Farrakhan, has shown himself to be quite fluent in the vernacular of racism and anti-Semitism. During a January 2017 appearance on a CNN panel, for instance, Hill took issue with black celebrities like Ray Lewis, Jim Brown, and Steve Harvey for accepting President-elect Donald Trump's invitation to meet with him at Trump Tower. After Bruce LeVell — an African American member of Trump’s diversity coalition — objected to Hill’s complaints, Hill characterized LeVell and all other nonwhites who were working on behalf of Trump’s agenda as “a bunch of mediocre Negroes.”
On Columbus Day 2012, Hill published an op-ed in which he listed the “15 Most Overrated White People” – a list that included such names as Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, William Shakespeare, and Babe Ruth. Hill’s motivation for writing this column, he explained, was his angst over the celebration of a national holiday honoring “an immoral treasure hunter” and “vicious conquistador.”

In stark contrast to his sneering derision of “overrated” whites, Hill has heaped mountains of glowing praise upon convicted black cop-killers like Mumia Abu Jamal (“one of the world’s most celebrated journalists, freedom fighters, and political prisoners”) and Assata Shakur (“an American hero and freedom fighter”).
In October 2015, Hill lauded Rasmea Odeh — the mastermind of a deadly 1969 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem — as a “Palestinian freedom fighter.” Viewing Israel as “an apartheid state” that deserves to be crushed economically by organized worldwide boycotts, Hill contends that violence is a wholly legitimate means of advancing the creation of “a free Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In other words, all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — precisely the territory that constitutes Israel — should henceforth be known as “Palestine.”
Among the most revealing aspects of Hill's worldview is the genuine love and admiration he has voiced for the late Khalid Abdul Muhammad, describing him as a “mentor, teacher, and revolutionary hero.” Best remembered as a vulgar mouthpiece of the Nation Of Islam and the New Black Panther Party, Muhammad famously accused Jews of having provoked Adolf Hitler when they “went in there, in Germany, the way they do everywhere they go, and they supplanted, they usurped.” Further, Muhammad advised blacks that “[t]here are no good crackers, and if you find one, [you should] kill him before he changes.” He told a television audience that “[t]here is a little bit of Hitler in all white people.” He told a San Francisco State University audience that the “white man” is “not a devil,” but is “the Devil.” He declared that blacks, in retribution against South African whites of the apartheid era, should “kill the women,…kill the children,…kill the babies,…kill the blind,…kill the crippled,…kill the faggot,…kill the lesbian,…kill them all.” And he praised Colin Ferguson, a black man who had shot some twenty white and Asian commuters (killing six of them) in a racially motivated 1993 shooting spree aboard a New York commuter train, as a hero who possessed the courage to “just kill every goddamn cracker that he saw.”
So much for Hill's “mentor,” “teacher,” and “hero.” Oh sure, Muhammad's language may have been a bit salty at times, but at least he wasn't an “overrated white person.”
Muhammad's mentor, Louis Farrakhan, likewise has a long, well-documented history of venom-laced references to “white devils” and Jewish “bloodsuckers.” He has characterized Jews as “wicked deceivers” from “the synagogue of Satan”; has referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion”; has described Adolf Hitler as “a very great man”; and has portrayed white people variously as “vicious beasts,” “the skunks of the planet,” and “potential humans [who] haven’t evolved yet.” 
In March 2015, Farrakhan said that “Israelis and Zionist Jews” — and “not … Arabs or Muslims at all” — were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a sermon he delivered four months later in Miami, Farrakhan issued what was, in essence, a call for black people to murder whites: “I’m looking for 10,000 in the midst of a million. Ten thousand fearless men who say death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny.... [S]talk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling!”
A protégé of both Farrakhan and Khalid Abdul Muhammad is the former Chairman of the New Black Panther Party, Malik Zulu Shabazz, who once told a Howard University audience: “I say to all Jewish people and all white people … stop pushing your Holocaust down my throat.” At a “Redeem the Dream” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Shabazz called on black young people to unite against their “common enemy” — the white man — and he articulated his “black dream” of seeing “caskets and funerals in the community of our enemy.”
Even while denouncing what he depicts as the scourge of white supremacy, Shabazz passionately embraces his own philosophy of racial superiority: “Black Power! Black Power!… Our genes are dominant, white genes are recessive.... Black Power!”
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Shabazz defended Osama bin Laden and blamed President George W. Bush for the horrors of that day. Calling America and Israel the “number one and two terrorists right now on the planet,” Shabazz declared: “Zionism is racism, Zionism is terrorism, Zionism is colonialism, Zionism is Imperialism, and support for Zionism is the root of why so many were killed on September 11.” During a New Black Panther Party meeting in March 2002, Shabazz held up a picture of bin Laden and praised him as a Muslim “brother” and “a bold man” who was “not bowing down” to the West, but rather was “standing up” for his beliefs and “bringing reform to this world.” Urging his listeners to “give [bin Laden] his respect,” Shabazz said: “Let’s give him a hand, man.”
At a protest outside B’nai B’rith headquarters in Washington soon thereafter, Shabazz said: “Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!”
Shabazz's successor as Chairman of the New Black Panther Party is Hashim Nzinga, who routinely refers to white people as “crackers” and has accused Jews of using “their monies” to “infiltrat[e]” historically black colleges with the poison of “white supremacy.”
Another longtime New Black Panther Party leader, Quanell X — who recently severed his ties to that organization — once told a CNN interviewer that black Americans were fully prepared to resort to violence as a means of addressing racial injustices. Declaring that “all you Jews can go straight to hell,” he warned: “I say to Jewish America: Get ready … knuckle up, put your boots on, because we’re ready and the war is going down.”
 
A particularly prominent black racist/anti-Semite who has made a long career out of smearing whites and Jews is Jesse Jackson. In a private conversation with a black reporter during his 1984 presidential campaign, Jackson infamously referred to Jews as “Hymies,” and to New York City as “Hymietown.” In a speech at Michigan State University many years later, he disparaged the American founders as nothing more than “a bunch of white men” who were oblivious to the needs and perceptions of nonwhites.
A slightly younger and distinctly more vulgar version of Jackson is the equally renowned “civil rights activist” Al Sharpton, who first gained notoriety thirty years ago when he helped perpetuate the obscene Tawana Brawley hoax, where a black teenage girl falsely claimed to have been the victim of a racially motivated gang-rape that in fact had never even occurred.

A few years after that, Sharpton fanned the flames of a series of deadly race riots that overran the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn after a Hasidic driver had accidentally struck and killed a young black boy. Among other things, Sharpton characterized local Jews as “the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights.”
In a 1994 speech at New Jersey’s Kean College, Sharpton referred to white people as “crackers” who “was in the cave while we [blacks] was building empires.” “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it,” he added for good measure.
In 1995, Sharpton led his National Action Network in a racially charged boycott against Freddy’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned business in Harlem. The street leader of the boycott, former mental patient Morris Powell, and his fellow protesters repeatedly warned passersby not to patronize the “crackers” and “the greedy Jew bastards [who are] killing our [black] people.” This all took place under the watchful, approving eye of Sharpton, who referred to the proprietors of Freddy’s as “white interlopers.” The subsequent picketing became ever-more menacing in its tone, until one of the participants eventually shot four whites inside the store and then set the building on fire –– killing seven people in all.

In June 2016, Sharpton led a rally in support of black Assemblyman Keith Wright, who at that time was running in a Democratic primary election as part of his quest for a U.S. House seat. Belittling Wright’s primary opponents, who also were black, as race traitors, Sharpton said: “You’re supposed to be attracted to these Negroes you ain’t never seen before. I mean, they must have a laboratory to just create these Negroes.”
There is no white person anywhere in the media or in politics who could have said this –– or any of the other ugly remarks made by Sharpton –– without being permanently blacklisted from polite company. But Sharpton faced no consequences whatsoever. Indeed, former President Barack Obama publicly lauded him as “a voice for the voiceless and ... dispossessed”; praised him for his “commitment to fight injustice and inequality”; and thanked him for his “dedication to the righteous cause of perfecting our union.” Moreover, Sharpton visited the White House on official business at least 85 times during Obama's two terms in office.
Keith Ellison, the longtime U.S. congressman who was recently elected Attorney General of Minnesota, once published an article advocating slavery reparations as well as the creation of a geographically self-contained “homeland” for black people. For more than a decade, Ellison worked actively on behalf of the Nation Of Islam and argued that Louis Farrakhan “is a role model for black youth”; “is not an anti-Semite”; “is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world”; and is regarded by “most black people” as “a central voice for our collective aspirations.”
Filmmaker Spike Lee has been highly outspoken on racial matters in many different contexts and venues. After visiting apartheid-era South Africa in the early 1990s, for instance, he said: “I seriously wanted to pick up a gun and shoot whites. The only way to resolve matters is by bloodshed.” On other occasions, Lee has bluntly articulated his contempt for black-white couples. “I give interracial couples a look,” he once said. “Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.”
In February 2014, during a Black History Month event at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Lee angrily denounced the recent influx of new, wealthy, and disproportionately white residents to certain historically black New York City neighborhoods. He also voiced resentment over what he viewed as the white newcomers’ efforts to quash local black traditions and pastimes. Said Lee:

“Then comes the motherfu**in’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We [blacks] been here. You just can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfu**in’ African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud.... Get the fu** outta here!”

Lee then likened the wave of gentrification to efforts to wipe out Native Americans who already had been living on the continent during the nation’s formative years. And in yet another allusion to attempted genocide, Lee stated in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that “AIDS is a government-engineered disease” designed to eradicate nonwhites and homosexuals.
Jeremiah Wright, the longtime former pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, likewise believes that “we started the AIDS virus … as a means of genocide against people of color.” A Jew-hater extraordinaire, Wright has referred to Israel as a “dirty word”; has stated that Zionism contains an element of “white racism”; has likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid era; and has advocated divestment campaigns targeting companies that conduct business in, or with, Israel. When a number of prominent African Americans counseled fellow blacks to boycott Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March in 1995, Wright derided them variously as “Negro leaders,” “colored leaders,” “Oreos,” “darkies,” and “house niggras.”
Leonard Jeffries, a former Professor of Black Studies at the City College of New York, contends that blacks are “sun people,” the culturally and racially superior counterparts of whites, the “ice people.” Speaking at a taxpayer-funded Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, he once claimed that his Jewish disputants in academia were “slick and devilish and dirty and dastardly.” Sneering at the “white boy” and “the culture of white racism,” Jeffries has exhorted historians to point out that President George Washington was nothing more than a “slave master bastard Founding Father.” 
Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali is a California-based black Imam who lectures frequently at Muslim Student Union and Muslim Students Association events. A passionate supporter of the genocidal terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, he endorses suicide bombings as a legitimate “resistance” tactic: “Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, ‘Go honey, go!’ That ain’t suicide; that’s martyrdom.”  
In a May 2006 appearance at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali accused the “apartheid State of Israel” of carrying out a “holocaust” and a “genocide” against the Palestinian people. Speaking from a podium whose facade was adorned with a banner that said “Israel, the 4th Reich,” he referred to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks.” “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered,” Malik-Ali added. “... We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.”
Another noteworthy black racist is Women's March, Inc. co-president Tamika Mallory, who previously served as executive director of Al Sharpton's National Action Network and has characterized Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as the “Greatest Of All Time.” “We’re not really interested in hearing white women talk about how much they want to work with us [in Women's March], and how much they want to be allies, and how much they appreciate us, and all those great things,” says Mallory, because they “have been voting the wrong way” and thus “are largely to blame” for America's racial inequities. Moreover, Mallory accuses white women of being “unable to step aside and allow women of color to … lead.”
At an event in 2011, Congressman James Clyburn shared a stage with Louis Farrakhan, who discussed the Nation Of Islam book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which purports to provide “irrefutable evidence that the most prominent of the Jewish pilgrim fathers [sic] used kidnapped Black Africans disproportionately more than any other ethnic or religious group in New World history.” After Farrakhan spoke about the need for blacks to pool their resources and work together, Clyburn said: “I want to thank Minister Farrakhan for offering up a number of precepts that we ought to adhere to.”
Farrakhan and Clyburn have plenty of company among black public figures who are not only unashamed of engaging in racial tribalism, but who actually go so far as to put it on display and shout it from the rooftops. In 2012, for instance, actor Samuel L. Jackson proudly and defiantly acknowledged that in 2008 “I voted for Barack [Obama] because he was black.... [His] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me.”
In a “Millions for Reparations” rally demanding that the federal government pay slavery reparations to black Americans, New York City Councilman Charles Barron angrily declared: “I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing,’ and then slap him just for my mental health.” When delivering a commencement address to black students at Medgar Evers College in 2009, Barron encouraged the graduates to always identify themselves first-and-foremost as black: “Never forget who you are, and don’t be afraid to be black…. I don’t want you to be a lawyer who happens to be black. Be a black lawyer. I don’t want you to be an elected official who happens to be black. Be a black elected official. We got a black President. We got a black governor. Say black, black, black, black, black.”
Another hallmark of contemporary black racism is a spirit of self-righteous combativeness that jumps at any opportunity to disparage white people in openly racialist terms. In December 2018, for example, NBA star LeBron James ripped NFL team owners as “a bunch of old, white men” who “got that slave mentality. And it’s like: ‘This is my team. You do what the fu** I tell y’all to do, or we get rid of y’all’.”
In a similarly mean and accusatory tone, Democrat Congressman Andre Carson told a gathering of supporters at a 2011 Congressional Black Caucus event that the conservative Tea Party movement was infested with white racism: “This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us [blacks] as second-class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me [blacks] … hanging on a tree.”

In October 2018, CNN host Don Lemon scolded President Trump for “demonizing” Muslims and illegal aliens as potential terror threats. Then, in the next breath, he asserted that “the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban. So what do we do about that?”
Like most black racists, Lemon routinely engages in psychological projection by accusing white people of harboring racist beliefs and malevolent intent. For instance, he claims that President Trump was engaging in racism when he mocked both Lemon and Congresswoman Maxine Waters as people of low intelligence. And yet, as the Media Research Center has documented, there have at least 36 known occasions where Trump has publicly characterized specific white individuals as “dummies,” “not bright,” “dopey,” “clueless,” and “low IQ.”
The late Professor Derrick Bell, widely regarded as the principal founder of Critical Race Theory, described Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as a “smart and superarticulate” man and “a great hero” for black people. Claiming that “few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks,” Bell stated that “slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.”
In a 2016 op-ed piece in The New York Times, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson described whites as people of boundless “privilege,” known for their “selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be [theirs] first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we [blacks] can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.” Dyson also laments that blacks commonly react to white racism by “sicken[ing] our souls with depression”; presumably he is unaware that white suicide rates are fully three times higher than those of blacks.
Salon political writer Chauncey DeVega laments that “Negrophobia” — a form of “mental, physical and emotional violence against black people” which “presumes the inherently benign nature of whiteness and the dangerousness of black and brown people” — is ubiquitous in America, “where many whites dehumanize black people by subconsciously linking them to apes.” 
Fellow Slate writer Jamelle Bouie contends that “the Americans who backed Trump and his threat of state-sanctioned violence against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim Americans … voted for a racist.” “If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question,” says Bouie. “That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice.... To insist [that] Trump’s backers are good people is to treat their inner lives with more weight than the actual lives on the line under a Trump administration. At best, it’s myopic and solipsistic. At worst, it’s morally grotesque.”
In September 2018, then-ESPN host Jemele Hill posted a tweet stating that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.” In a subsequent discussion about that particular charge, Hill doubled down: “I thought I was saying water is wet. I didn’t even think it was controversial.”
The overt and unapologetic promotion of racial tribalism has become the defining hallmark of the black Left in contemporary America. Rooted in the absurd notion that black people, by definition, cannot be racists because they lack political “power,” black racism today parades righteously and ostentatiously under the protective, all-encompassing banner of “social justice.” And because the leftists who thoroughly dominate America's educational establishment and mass media have largely embraced and advanced this very same narrative of perpetual black victimhood and white transgression, black racists have become emboldened as never before to trumpet endless litanies of manufactured racial grievances. As evidenced in the many examples cited above, they feel free to thunder with absolute impunity things that would permanently destroy the career and reputation of any white person who dared to even whisper similar words. This is how people come to hate each other. This is how nations get torn apart. This is how civilizations die.

John Perazzo is the managing editor of DiscoverTheNetworks.org.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272405/racist-anti-semitic-black-left-john-perazzo

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Rashida Tlaib And Linda Sarsour Wear Palestinian Robes To Congress - Aiden Pink

 ​by Aiden Pink

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan
 

The "new look" in Congress

As Rashida Tlaib prepared to be sworn in as the first Palestinian-American congresswoman on Thursday, she wore a traditional Palestinian robe — and was joined by activist Linda Sarsour.

“It’s a national holiday, I’m doing no work today,” Sarsour, who is also Palestinian-American, said in a video she posted on Facebook. “You’re witnessing history today,” she added.

Tlaib, Sarsour and others in attendance outside her office were wearing a thobe, a traditional Palestinian robe. Tlaib wrote in Elle magazine that she was wearing the thobe to honor her mother, a who dropped out of school in the West Bank in eighth grade and worked as a tailor. “It fills me with joy to be able to show aspects of Palestinian culture,” she wrote. Dozens of other people have posted pictures on social media of themselves wearing thobes in honor of the occasion.

Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, is believed to be the first Democratic member of Congress to endorse the one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has also said she supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel and has called for cuts to U.S. military aid to the Jewish state, all of which have led her to be criticized by Jewish groups.

Sarsour, one of the most prominent Muslim-American activists in America, is best known for her co-leadership of the Women’s March. She apologized in November for the organization’s handling of accusations of anti-Semitism and her and other leaders’ ties to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Another Women’s March co-founder, Bob Bland, was also in attendance in front of Tlaib’s office.

Justin Amash, a Republican also from Michigan, became the first Palestinian-American congressman in 2011.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink


Aiden Pink

Source: https://forward.com/fast-forward/416979/rashida-tlaib-and-linda-sarsour-wear-palestinian-robes-to-congress/?attribution=blog-article-listing-1-headline

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Trump Must Not Include DACA “Fix” In Exchange for Wall - Michael Cutler

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by Michael Cutler

DACA compromise would undermine national security.

The partial shut-down of the federal government grinds on while the Democrats, poised to assume the majority in the House of Representatives, refuse to fund a wall to secure the dangerous U.S./Mexican border against the un-inspected entry of people and cargo into the United States.

I am compelled to reiterate a point I have made repeatedly in past articles, that a wall along that problematic border would not stop a single person from entering the United States but would force all who seek to enter the United States to undergo the statutorily required inspections and vetting process that is conducted at ports of entry and to record entries or attempted entries by aliens for national security and related purposes.

President Trump has refused to sign off on a budget that does not fund the wall that would protect our nation.  He has consequently opted to shut down non-essential elements of the federal government.

During the failed negotiations President Trump, in confronting a belligerent and recalcitrant Chuck Schumer, said that he would be proud to shut down the government if he could not get the funding for the wall. Schumer accused the President of throwing a temper tantrum.  If anyone was throwing anything, I would accuse Mr. Schumer and his cohorts of throwing America and Americans under the proverbial bus. What has never been asked of Schumer, Pelosi and the other Democrats is why they would not want a wall to prevent the un-inspected entry into the United States, of illegal aliens including criminals, fugitives, terrorists, gang members and massive quantities of narcotics and other contraband.

As I noted above, the purpose of the wall is not to seal off the United States from Mexico but to simply prevent aliens and contraband from entering the United States without inspection. That inspections process is essential to vet aliens to prevent the entry of those whose presence in the United States would be problematic and/or dangerous to America and Americans.  In point of fact, the decisions of the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors who conduct those inspections are guided by 8 U.S. Code § 1182, a section of law comprehended within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), that enumerates the categories of aliens who are not to be admitted into the United States.  Among the categories of aliens who are to be excluded are those suffering from dangerous contagious diseases or suffer from severe mental illness.  Additionally, aliens who were previously deported, are criminals, terrorists, spies, fugitives from justice, human rights violators, war criminals, human traffickers, and aliens who would likely become public charges or take jobs of Americans.

There is absolutely no distinction made as to race, religion or ethnicity of aliens.

The Democrats insist on using technology to secure the border.  Trump properly observed that sometimes old solutions are the best and noted that wheels have been around for many, many years. Indeed, hi-tech “solutions” to border security would not stop any illegal aliens from entering the United States in the first place but only, hopefully, detect aliens after they penetrated our borders.  Once in the United States--aided and abetted by judges who have consistently over-reached their authority—these illegal aliens would undoubtedly obstruct efforts to remove [deport] them. This would inspire more aliens, from countries around the world, to head for the United States where their sheer numbers would continue to increasingly overwhelm an immigration system that lacks the resources to effectively deal with the tens of millions of illegal aliens who are already present in the United States, in violation of our laws that were enacted to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would be problematic or dangerous to America and Americans. I focused on this in a recent article, Why Trump’s Wall Is A Must, noting that a virtual fence would stop virtually no one!

One of the issues that has been noted in the news is the idea that perhaps a “compromise” could be reached between the administration and the Democrats to include a massive amnesty program under the aegis of DACA (Deferred Action- Childhood Arrival). This would be nothing short of catastrophic, compromising national security for decades to come.

Let’s briefly review the sordid history of DACA. DACA was a program concocted by the Obama administration to overcome the failure of Congress to pass a massive amnesty program known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the follow-up attempt to pass a massive amnesty program known as “The DREAM Act.”  (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act).  It is noteworthy that for all of the howls that typically accompany any use of the term “Alien” to describe non-citizens present in the United States, the term Alien became incredibly palatable when it was needed to create legislation to legalize millions of heretofore illegal aliens! The concept behind the DREAM Act and DACA was to exploit the well-known empathy and compassion Americans have for children.  Both of those efforts were sold as means of helping children who were brought to the United States by their parents.  Ostensibly these children had no control over their parents’ actions and thus became victims. In order to qualify, these “young aliens” had to claim that they were brought to the United States illegally prior to their 16th birthdays but, under the DREAM Act could apply to participate in that program provided that they filed such an application before they became 35 years of age.

DACA which was enacted by Obama’s “magic pen” via executive order (executive caveat) in June 2012 would have required that the aliens made their applications prior to their 32nd birthdays. There would be millions of illegal aliens who could claim to have entered as children but inasmuch as they had entered without inspection, there would be no way to determine if any aliens had entered the United States 20 years ago or 20 days ago. In fact, aliens who have not yet left for the United States could make their way here and falsely claim to have been here for decades. There would be no way to interview all of these aliens, let alone conduct field investigations. This would literally rule out the red carpet for immigration fraudsters who could lie through their teeth and get away with it.  These lies would constitute immigration fraud. 

On June 17, 2012 Fox News published my Op-Ed in which I stated that what President Obama had referred to as an exercise of “prosecutorial discretion” should have been referred to as “prosecutorial deception.” In August 2018 I wrote an article, The Daca Sword Of Damocles that cited an excerpt from the official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel that focused on immigration-related vulnerabilities that the terrorists had exploited.  Immigration fraud was determined to be of extreme significance. Here are two significant quotes from the report:

“Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.”
“Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.” 

Immigration fraud would permeate any such massive amnesty program. As noted above, immigration fraud was the key method of entry and embedding for terrorists and not just where the 19 hijacker/terrorists who carried out the terror attacks on September 11, 2001 but in many terror attacks as well. The immigration system lacks the capability to carry out its current missions.  Adding millions of additional applications to the overwhelmed system at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), which already adjudicates more than 6 million applications annually, would cause the beleaguered bureaucracy to implode. In the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, our leaders constantly reminded us that in order to be successful, the terrorists need to “get it right” only once; while for America to be safe, our officials must “get it right” 100% of the time. In simple terms, every time an alien enters the United States and every time an application for an immigration benefit is filed, terrorists are provided with that one opportunity that they are eager to achieve to launch a deadly terror attack.

On June 22, 2007 the Washington Times published my Op-Ed Immigration bill a ‘No Go in which I voiced my concerns about Comprehensive Immigration Reform which are the same today about DACA. In that Op-Ed, nearly a dozen years ago, I suggested that a new and far more honest name be applied to that legislation.  That title would work just fine for DACA today. DACA should be renamed the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act!”  

Michael Cutler

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272432/trump-must-not-include-daca-fix-exchange-wall-michael-cutler

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The absurd saga of Khan Al-Ahmar continues - Akiva Bigman

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by Akiva Bigman

The outpost is a Palestinian Authority-planned, intentional slight toward the Israeli government, yet in a democratic country, the prime minister alone can't simply decide to evacuate an entire community.

Around the time Amona was forcefully evacuated, over two years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in no uncertain terms: "One thing has to be made clear – Israel is governed by the rule of law. The court's ruling obligates us all and it also obligates the government of Israel. But the law has to be equal. The same law that obliges us to vacate Amona also necessitates the removal of illegal construction in other parts of our country. … I'm not willing to accept a double standard between Jews and Arabs when it comes to illegal construction."

There's been ample time to put this sentiment to the test. Netanyahu invested heavily in preventing the Amona evacuation and in getting its residents to leave voluntarily. The same energies have been poured into convincing the approximately 180 Bedouin residents of Khan Al-Ahmar to leave voluntarily. But we are now approaching the moment of truth.

"The government ministers and I are doing everything possible, everything, to find a solution," Netanyahu said before the evacuation of Amona. "We have devoted days and nights to this [matter], we've held dozens of discussions, suggested creative solutions, out-of-the-box solutions – but to my regret, our proposals weren't accepted." Amona was evacuated, twice now. Khan Al-Ahmar still awaits its fate.

A reminder of the obvious: Just as the illegal Amona outpost was evacuated, there's no reason not to evacuate the illegal outpost of Khan Al-Ahmar. The entire outpost is an intentional and planned slight toward the Israeli government by the Palestinian Authority, meant to garner the public relations effect we are now seeing. There are readily accessible solutions for the people living there, such as developed plots near Maaleh Adumim, which invalidate claims of human rights being trampled. Moreover, European countries help fund this provocation, such that Khan Al-Ahmar has become a symbol of Israeli control in Area C. The outpost is a land-locked protest flotilla.

When the prime minister is criticized on the issue of vacating communities, he can be excused somewhat. There are binding court rulings, international considerations, priorities when it comes to deploying forces on behalf of political battles, independent law enforcement systems and more. In a democratic country not everything is under the direct control of the prime minister; in certain cases, these factors indeed apply.

The ongoing saga of Khan Al-Ahmar brings these "extenuating circumstances" to bear, making the entire situation absurd and hard to tolerate.

Akiva Bigman

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-absurd-saga-of-khan-al-ahmar-continues/

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The Results of Obama's Presidency Still Don't Matter to Journalists - Jack Hellner

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by Jack Hellner

The egotistical, narcissistic Obama said he would stop sea levels from rising when he became President but he couldn’t even keep his promise to let people keep their Doctor, Plan and lower premiums.

I read frequently what a good or even great a president Barack Obama was, and how his administration was virtually free of scandals. We also frequently hear how bad a President Trump is and how corrupt he is.

Somehow when journalists and others spew forth with these generalities, I never see the examples of what makes Obama good or great, and what makes Trump so bad. So, I thought it would be good to fill in some of the blanks, because results should be what makes a President good or bad. (Of course, Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing other than giving a speech, so he has been idolized for a long time for a blank slate).

In 2008 Terrorism deaths Worldwide were 15,708. In 2009 they were 15,310. By the last three years of Obama’s Presidency, terrorism deaths had risen to 32,763, 29424 and 25,722. The first two years of Trump’s presidency are back down to below 19,000. It is no surprise that terrorism deaths rose when Obama called ISIS the JV team and drew a fatuous red line in Syria, did everything he could to build up the terrorist-sponsoring Iran, and even stopped a U.S investigation into drug running by the terrorist Hezb’allah organization. Thank goodness we now have Trump instead of Hillary who even said, “What difference does it make?” when people died in Benghazi, and who was so lawless with classified information. 

USA Today

Terror-related deaths have fallen for the third consecutive year around the globe,
After peaking at about 34,000 deaths in 2014, terrorism-related deaths fell by 44 percent last year to 18,800,
Military defeats of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Iraq and Syria and the Nigerian government “breaking the back” of Boko Haram are the main reasons for the drop in deaths related to terrorism, Killelea said. Afghanistan recorded the highest number of terror-related deaths among all countries.
Overall, deaths at the hands of the Islamic State dropped by 52 percent in 2017, according to the report. Killelea predicted that the group will no longer rank as the deadliest terrorist organization in 2018.

President Obama strengthened tyrants in China, Cuba, Iran and Russia throughout his eight-year presidency. He did little to stop North Korea. Trump, in contrast, is weakening the economies of tyrants throughout the World with sanctions, tariffs, getting out of the Iran deal and increasing oil production. He appears to have scared North Korea into stopping the threatening of its neighbors. 

Tillerson and Kelly said they had to keep Trump from breaking laws, but they never accused him of breaking actual laws. Obama and those he surrounded himself with didn't care. Sanctuary cities and states and DACA are just two examples. 

The Obama administration illegally spied on thousands of Americans, including political opponents. The Obama administration also illegally unmasked names of people surrounding Trump. We have seen nothing similar under Trump. 

Obama’s policies gave us the slowest economic recovery in seventy years despite almost zero interest rates, massive federal injection of funds, substantial government spending increases and an increase of around $10 trillion in debt. Trump has given us the fastest annual growth since 2005. Obama gave us the lowest labor participation rate in forty years. Trump has brought the unemployment for all races, all education levels and all sexes to record lows. 

Obama rewarded political bundlers with jobs and contracts. Trump has given almost 100% of U.S. taxpayers and businesses more money to improve the economy, whether they donated to him or supported him or not. Elizabeth Warren and others say, without evidence, that Trump’s policies only benefit the rich. What a crock. It appears that almost the only people that may pay more taxes are higher income people from high tax states that may lose some deductions. It is the Democrats who are trying to protect those rich people, not Trump. Democrats are also the ones that push the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles where almost all the credits go to wealthier people who pretend they care about the environment while they virtue-signal their neighbors.

Obama used the EPA, CFPB and Justice Department to blackmail companies and set up slush funds for political purposes and to reward supporters. The slush funds are gone after Trump was elected. 

Obama took away freedom of choice on health care and premiums, and out of pocket expenses rose rapidly. Trump has given freedom of choice back and all of a sudden, prices are stabilizing in 2019. It must be a coincidence. Obama also illegally diverted funds, without going through the cumbersome legislative process, when Obamacare was coming up short. It also was Democrats who diverted Medicare funds to Obamacare, not Trump or Republicans. 

Obama also violated freedom of speech rights of political opponents through IRS. He weaponized the Justice Department to protect people who violated laws who worked for him, while they were used to target Trump and those who surrounded him. Yet journalists overwhelmingly continue the fiction that no one was above the law during Obama’s eight years and that the Justice Department treats all of us equally. 

A fictional Russian collusion narrative perpetuated by a fraudulent dossier created out of thin air and paid for by Hillary and the DNC is not about Trump corruption. The clear case of corruption resides with the Obama Administration colluding with the DNC and Hillary to elect Hillary and destroy Trump. The complicit media is a co-conspirator for perpetuating the fraud. 

It is also not a campaign finance violation to use personal money to pay off blackmailing porn stars and Playboy bunnies. It should be a campaign finance violation to steal taxpayer money to hide scandals of members of Congress. If Pelosi actually wants transparency, she will release the names of all cases where taxpayer money was used to protect incumbents. 

The egotistical, narcissistic Obama said he would stop sea levels from rising when he became President but he couldn’t even keep his promise to let people keep their Doctor, Plan and lower premiums. 

I honestly can’t think of anything Obama did domestically or relating to foreign policy that made the U.S. or World safer and stronger. I wish these people that say that Obama was good or great would come up with a list of policies that were meant to make the U.S. as a whole better -- private sector. Obama came into office saying he wanted to remake America. I believe that is true. He wanted to remake America to weaken its power throughout the world and to make the government stronger and make more people dependent on it. Those are lousy goals.

Image credit: cropped from White House Archives

Jack Hellner

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/the_results_of_obamas_presidency_still_dont_matter_to_journalists.html

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All eyes are on the attorney general - Mati Tuchfeld

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by Mati Tuchfeld

If Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit caves to pressure and files an indictment against PM Benjamin Netanyahu while the 2019 Knesset campaign is underway, it will become the sole issue of the election.

It hasn't been a week since Israel Hayom first reported that the Likud Knesset campaign plans to target any decision by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to file an indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pending a hearing, while the campaign is underway. In effect, the attack on Mendelblit has already begun, before any decision has been made about a hearing. It started with stray comments from a few MKs and ministers. It progressed to hints from the prime minister, who was visiting Brazil. And it reached a new height on Thursday in a video Netanyahu published denying that Mendelblit would file an indictment before the voters headed to the booths on April 9.

But if the attorney general isn't deterred by Netanyahu's outburst and the opinion of Judge (ret.) Oded Mudrik and other senior legal scholars and proceeds with an indictment, what we saw on Thursday will be nothing compared to what the Likud campaign has in store. If Mendelblit decides to indict, it will not only become the central issue of the 2019 Knesset campaign, it will be the sole focus of the country's politics.

But the attacks on and attempts to delegitimize the looming decision rest on arguments that are hard to ignore. According to Netanyahu, if a decision is made about a hearing prior to the election, everyone knows that the hearing itself and the decision in which it results will take place only after the vote. In other words, by the time the polls open, the citizens of Israel will be able to read only the indictment against Netanyahu as worded by the attorney general, and not the defense.

Anyone who thinks that the hearing process is merely an unimportant matter of protocol is wrong. Sometimes, hearings can completely reverse decisions about indictments. It is essentially the first time the attorney general can receive answers from the suspect. Until now, all he has had on Netanyahu has been the police records of questioning sessions. Netanyahu is speaking out more forcefully against a possible indictment before the election as part of the campaign, but that doesn't make him wrong.

We can assume that there are plenty of Likud players who would prefer that Mendelblit indict the prime minister during the campaign. If that happens, senior Likud officials will be able to argue that law enforcement is targeting the prime minister. That he's being persecuted. That the attorney general is a good, deserving person who caved under pressure. And that the ball is now in the hands of the people. And that only the public will decide from here on out whether it buys the accusations against Netanyahu or not. Senior party officials think that this would give the Likud tremendous potential to expand. In the 1999 Knesset election, Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri was indicted, and the party won 17 seats, making it the third-largest party in the Knesset. That pales in comparison to what an indictment of Netanyahu would do for the Likud now.

The center-left election campaign is starting off on the wrong foot, with an astonishing drop in the polls, splits and factionalization, coup attempts in Labor – it's a real mess. They comprise a lifeline in terms of the cases against Netanyahu. They're all he has to grab onto. The calls from the Center-Left to indict him no matter what are no credit to their leaders, who are just proving that they can't oust Netanyahu from the Prime Minister's Office without the help of Mendelblit and his friends.

Mati Tuchfeld

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/all-eyes-are-on-the-attorney-general/

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