PLO blocks West Bank Arabs leaving for a better life - David Singer

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by David Singer

The only media outlet reporting Erekat’s incendiary statement was the Chinese newsagency Xinhua. The remaining media’s failure to report this news is concerning.

Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – Saeb Erekat – has told a political symposium in Jericho that West Bank Arabs would not be allowed to voluntarily leave – virtually holding them captives against their will.

Erekat stated:

"We will not allow resettlement or formation of refugee committees for that aim, while holding on to the settlement of their cause in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions."

Michael Lynk - the United Nations Human Rights Council’s “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” – had issued a statement on 28 June endorsing the right to freedom of movement – enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Erekat’s outrageous threat was not responding to Lynk’s comments - but to leaked reports claiming the United States might be seeking the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in at least five Arab neighboring countries.

If confirmed - 'West Bank' Arabs could well be prepared to voluntarily leave the West Bank in large numbers – especially if offered the opportunity to legally enter other Arab countries and receive financial assistance for rehousing and resettlement there.

President Trump has a massive US$28.7 billion possibly available to aid 'West Bank' Arabs who want to emigrate – being the money he wanted to plough into revitalising the West Bank and Gaza – which both the PLO and Hamas unbelievably rejected.

Given the state of relationships between Israel, the PLO and Hamas – spending that money earmarked for projects within the West Bank and Gaza was a highly questionable exercise that could have seen the destruction of such projects in future conflicts between these three long-time enemies.

Helping those desperate to emigrate who have suffered the perverse decisions of the PLO during the last 25 years is a much more targeted use of the money – guaranteeing a far better outcome for West Bank Arabs and their families.

The 2019 Human Rights Watch Report evidences the toxic nature of the West Bank: 

• the PLO arrested activists who criticized their leaders, security forces, or policies, and mistreated and tortured some in their custody. 
• The Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine (ICHR), a statutory commission charged with monitoring human rights compliance by the Palestinian authorities, received 205 complaints of torture and ill-treatment by 'West Bank' security forces as of 31 October 2018. 
• In the 'West Bank' and East Jerusalem, Israeli security forces fatally shot 27 Palestinians and wounded at least 5,444,
• attacks by Israeli settlers injured 61 Palestinians and damaged property in 147 incidents.
• Palestinians killed 10 Israelis, including six civilians, and wounded at least 58 in the same period in the West Bank. 

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords - 95% of the 'West Bank' Arab population has been under total PLO administrative control. 

Real growth declined to around 2 percent in 2018 - lower than its average in previous years. The 2018 unemployment rate was 17.6 percent.  Youth unemployment between ages 15-24 is 29.8 percent. 

The World Bank has concluded that lack of progress towards peace and reconciliation creates an unsustainable economic situation. The PLO has refused to negotiate with Israel since April 2014 and has failed to call elections since 2007.

The only media outlet reporting Erekat’s incendiary statement was the Chinese newsagency Xinhua. The remaining media’s failure to report this news is concerning.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s failure to condemn Erekat’s controversial announcement is despicable.

Hopefully President Trump will pressure the PLO to reverse its position and offer a window of opportunity for those to leave who wish to do so.

Offering West Bank Arabs a lifeline to a better future elsewhere is long overdue.

PLO no leaving

צילום: INN:HK

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog


David Singer is an Australian lawyer who is active in Zionist community organizations in that country. He founded the "Jordan is Palestine" Committee in 1979.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24210

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Boris Johnson Reviving Britain's Standing on the World Stage - Con Coughlin

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by Con Coughlin

And the resulting close relationship between Washington and London will be one of the pillars of Britain's dynamic new approach.

• Mr Johnson's determination to help Britain reclaim its status as a leading world power after the drift of the May years is reflected in the stature of his appointments, especially regarding Britain's engagement with the outside world.
• In one of Mrs May's last acts as prime minister, Britain declined an offer of American military support to protect British shipping in the Gulf, resulting in Iran's Revolutionary Guard hijacking a British-registered oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and holding it captive in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
• Thus, with politicians of this calibre occupying key positions in the new British government, Mr Johnson now has a golden opportunity to revive Britain's standing on the world stage, one where the close relationship between Washington and London will be one of the pillars of Britain's dynamic new approach.

The appointment of Boris Johnson as Britain's new prime minister offers the serious prospect of a radical improvement in the bilateral ties between Washington and London. Pictured: Johnson enters Number 10 Downing Street on July 24, 2019, his first day in office as prime minister. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The appointment of Boris Johnson as Britain's new prime minister offers the serious prospect of a radical improvement in the bilateral ties between Washington and London following the froideur [chill] that came to define the transatlantic relationship under the outgoing prime minister, Theresa May.

While, in public, Mrs May offered loyal pledges of support to Donald Trump, and professed to enjoy a warm personal relationship with the American president, the reality was that the personal chemistry between the two leaders was often awkward, with Mrs May often failing to grasp Mr Trump's radical approach to global affairs.

The differences between the two are best summed up by Mrs May's failure to heed Mr Trump's advice on handling the challenging Brexit negotiations with the European Union. Mr Trump suggested London needed to play hardball with Brussels, even suggesting at one point that the UK should sue the EU as part of its negotiating strategy to demonstrate that it meant business.

This advice was completely contrary to Mrs May's mindset, as prevarication, obfuscation and a desperate desire to avoid confrontation at all costs were the characteristics that defined her premiership. Consequently, the negotiations resulted in the EU dictating the terms of the settlement. The subsequent withdrawal agreement was deemed so unacceptable that it failed to win the approval of the House of Commons, thereby ending Mrs May's premiership.

Moreover, throughout this sorry saga, relations between London and Washington continued to deteriorate to the point where, in one of Mrs May's last acts as prime minister, Britain declined an offer of American military support to protect British shipping in the Gulf, resulting in Iran's Revolutionary Guard hijacking a British-registered oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and holding it captive in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Mrs May's reasoning for not accepting the American offer was that to do so might inflict further damage to the Iran nuclear deal which Britain, together with the other European signatories of the deal, Germany and France, still believe it can rescue.

Indeed, the reality of relations between Downing Street and the White House was best summed up in the leaked diplomatic correspondence of Sir Kim Darroch, the UK Ambassador to Washington, who described the Trump White House as being "dysfunctional", and denounced the president's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal last year as being an act of "diplomatic vandalism" carried out to spite former President Barack Obama.

Now, following Mr Johnson' triumphant entry into Downing Street this week, the expectation on both sides of the Atlantic is that there will be a radical upgrade in relations between London and Washington, not least because of the strong personal chemistry that exists between Mr Johnson and the president. Mr Trump has already publicly professed his admiration for the new British premier, remarking that, "They call him Britain Trump".

Furthermore, Mr Johnson has signalled his determination radically to change Britain's approach to global affairs by undertaking a wholesale revision of personnel in the key political positions.

In what commentators in London are calling the "summer's day massacre", a total of 17 of Mrs May's senior cabinet ministers have either been sacked or offered their resignations. These include Jeremy Hunt, whose last act as Foreign Secretary was to reject Washington's offer to protect shipping in the Gulf and instead came up with the preposterous notion of establishing a "European Maritime Mission" to do the job instead. As France and Britain are the only European countries with navies capable of undertaking such a task, the notion was dead in the water before it even started.

Mr Johnson's determination to help Britain reclaim its status as a leading world power after the drift of the May years is reflected in the calibre of his appointments, especially regarding Britain's engagement with the outside world.

These include Dominic Raab, the new Foreign Secretary who served briefly as Brexit Secretary under Mrs May before resigning over the terms of her withdrawal agreement. Considered one of the more hawkish members of the new administration, Mr Raab is the son of a Czech-born Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1938. Previously he has worked as a lawyer at the Foreign Office, where he helped to prosecute war criminals and advised on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

Ben Wallace, the new defence secretary, is another appointment that bodes well for fulfilling Mr Johnson's more assertive outlook. A former officer in the British Army, in his previous job as Security Minister he took a hard line on Islamist terror groups such as Hezbollah.

Thus, with politicians of this calibre occupying key positions in the new British government, Mr Johnson now has a golden opportunity to revive Britain's standing on the world stage, one where the close relationship between Washington and London will be one of the pillars of Britain's dynamic new approach.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He is the author of "Khomeini's Ghost".

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14601/boris-johnson-world-stage

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The Weissmann Dossier - Kenneth R. Timmerman

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by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Who really wrote the Mueller Report?

Anyone who watched more than a few minutes of Wednesday’s painful hearings with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller discovered a sad truth the Democrats and many in the media continue to hide: Mueller neither wrote his report nor did he master the content of it.

Repeatedly during the day, the former FBI director stumbled over what we had been told were his findings. He slowly leafed through a binder, searching for passages that lawmakers were quoting to him, only to say “okay” or “true” when he finally found them.

In the morning’s hearing at the House Judiciary committee, Rep. Doug Collins asked Mueller if “conspiracy” – the criminal law term used in the first part of his report about Russia – and the vernacular term, “collusion” were the same thing. Mueller replied, “No.”

Taken aback, Collins asked if he was changing his earlier testimony – ie, the report – which stated on page 180 that collusion and conspiracy were the same. When Mueller finally found the passage, he withdrew his earlier testimony and stood by the report.

Rep. Collins – and frankly, every member of the two committees who questioned Mueller – had the elegance not to state the obvious: Mueller was non compus mentis. 

During the afternoon hearing, Rep. Peter Welch, D, Va, again asked whether he had found collusion. This time, Mueller was so far gone, he couldn’t find his words.

“We don’t use the word collusion,” he said. “The word we usually use is-ah-not collusion-ah. But one of the other-ah-terms that-ah-ah-that fills in when collusion is not used. In any event, we decided not to use the word collusion in so much as it has no relevance to the criminal law arena.”

“The term is ‘conspiracy’,” Welch said.

“Conspiracy, that’s exactly right.”

“You help me, I’ll help you,” Welch offered.

Similarly, Mueller drew a blank over the name of Fusion GPS, the company that had hired Christopher Steele on behalf of the Democrat National Committee to produce the infamous Russia “dossier” about Donald Trump.

“When discussing the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting you reference ‘the firm that produced the Steele reporting.’ The name of that firm was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?” Rep. Sterve Chabot, R, OH, asked.

Mueller said he was “not familiar” with the name.

“It was. It’s not a trick question. It was Fusion GPS,” Chabot said.

There were many other examples, and they were painful to watch.

The conclusion one must draw is significant and far-reaching. The 448 page dossier commonly referred to as the Mueller Report was not written by Robert Mueller, nor did the Special Counsel apparently review its findings or familiarize himself with the investigation that led up to those findings.

It is the Weissmann dossier, and it was written by the highly partisan Democrat lawyer and Hillary Clinton supporter Andrew Weissmann.

Weissmann is best known for wildly famous cases of prosecutorial overreach, including his overturned prosecution of Enron officials and the auditing firm Arthur Andersen LLP, which destroyed both firms and put over 100,000 people out of work.

Defense Attorney Sidney Powell, in her 2014 book Licensed to Lie, accuses Weissmann of suborning perjury, something that multiple witnesses in the (newly renamed) Weissman witch hunt have also accused him of doing.

Jerome Corsi is suing the Special Counsel and has said that he rejected a plea deal offered to him by the Special Counsel’s office because it required him to lie.

Similarly, The Hill’s John Solomon recently revealed that Weissmann reached out to the U.S. lawyers of Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash early on during the probe in another attempt to suborn perjury. “Give us some dirt on Donald Trump in the Russia case, and Team Mueller might make his 2014 U.S. criminal charges go away,” they said in effect, Solomon wrote.

According to Solomon’s account, Weissmann gave specific instructions to Firtash’s legal team on what lies their client should tell the Special Counsel.

If these tales of attempts to suborn perjury are accurate, Andrew Weissmann should be indicted and sent to jail.

But while jailing Weissmann might provide solace to Jerome Corsi and others who have been wronged by his prosecutorial misconduct, by the time that happens the political damage will have been done.

And that’s the point. Weissmann and his team of partisan Democrat lawyers wrote this entire 448 page report with one goal in mind: to provide a roadmap to Democrats in Congress for the impeachment of President Trump.

If you don’t believe that, just tune into any show on MSNBC or CNN. That’s all they’ve been talking about since Mueller’s testimony.

As Representative John Radcliffe, R-TX, pointed out in his exchange with Mueller on Wednesday, this report never should have been written, and if written, should never have been released, because it violates the most sacred U.S. legal principal, namely that accused persons are innocent until proven guilty.

“I agree that Donald Trump is not above the law,” Ratclifee said in conclusion. “He’s not. But he damned sure shouldn’t be below the law, which is where Volume 2 of this report puts him.”

Federal prosecutors either indict, or they decline to indict. They don’t decline to indict – as Team Weissmann did – all the while laying out the rationale for some other prosecutors, such as Democrat committee chairmen in the House, to indict.

Americans should now understand that the so-called Mueller Report is a political hit job, not a work of criminal investigation, and as such, it is just a souped-up version of the infamously unverified “Russia dossier” penned by former British intelligence officer turned Democrat Party paid operative, Christopher Steele

Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of "ISIS Begins, a Novel of the Iraq War."

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274432/weissmann-dossier-kenneth-r-timmerman

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Iran fueling friction on the Golan Heights - Yoav Limor

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by Yoav Limor

Despite Hezbollah's attempt to establish itself on the Syrian Golan and the pre-emptive attacks attributed to Israel, both sides are wary of escalating. Still, Iranian interests keep stoking the conflict.

After its success in pushing the Iranian forces away from the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights, Israel is stepping up its efforts against Hezbollah’s attempts to further entrench itself in the sector.

Tuesday’s airstrike on Tal al-Hara, a strategic hill south of Damascus, was the third to be attributed to Israel by the foreign media. All of the airstrikes targeted Hezbollah assets, mainly observation posts that the Shiite terrorist group is trying to form along the border as part of a wider lineup of weapons. These posts are intended to serve Hezbollah and its Iranian and perhaps Syrian patrons to gather intelligence and, in the future, as a potential platform for terrorist activity.

Hezbollah’s efforts in the sector have known their ups and downs. Under the auspices of the war in Syria, the Shiite terrorist group tried to set up an extensive terrorist grid in the area, but the elimination of two of its leaders, Samir Kuntar and Jihad Mughniyeh – also attributed to Israel – considerably slowed it down.

The end of the Syrian war, and especially the pause placed on Iranian militias’ efforts to establish themselves in the Golan Heights, brought Hezbollah back into the picture. The organization's activities in the Golan are encouraged and financed by Iran, and the Syrian regime, by means of tacit consent.

Israel Hayom has revealed in the past that the organization's senior commander in the Golan Heights is Munir Ali Naim Shaito, known as Haj Hashem, a veteran of the organization and a key player in Hezbollah’s assistance to the Syrian army during the civil war. Subsequently, the IDF also exposed details on Hezbollah’s secret plan to establish terrorist infrastructure in the Golan using Syrian civilians, mainly Druze.

While these reveals were meant to put pressure on Hezbollah, the latter has so far proven resistant to it, which is why, presumably, the IDF has resumed its countermeasures against Hezbollah’s plans for the Syrian Golan.

Thus far, these have been low-profile operations as both Israel and Hezbollah wish to avoid triggering a broader escalation. However, past experience shows that everyone is literally playing with fire, as anything can provoke a flare-up or an attack by Hezbollah on Israeli troops.

Israel has no interest in an escalation, but it will not relent on its principle of not allowing radical forces to establish themselves in the area south of Damascus.

For the time being, the IDF has the upper hand, but given Iran’s determination to continue operating in the region, it seems the struggle in the Golan appears to be in its infancy.


Yoav Limor

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/iran-fueling-friction-on-the-golan-heights/

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Has World War 3 already begun? The NSA may know something - Julio Rivera

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by Julio Rivera

Now more than ever, agencies like the newly forming Cybersecurity Directorate will play a critical role in our nation's defense strategy.

This week, the National Security Agency (NSA) made a major announcement regarding America's plan to combat international threats in the midst of an ongoing and seemingly never-ending series of cyber-skirmishes. 

A new unit within the NSA, the Cybersecurity Directorate, will focus on the growing threat to America posed by international hacking and is set to be led by Anne Neuberger. Neuberger was previously the agency's chief risk officer, its first, a position that was created to plug leaks after the Edward Snowden fiasco. She also was the NSA's deputy director of operations and, most recently, the former head of an NSA unit known as the Russia Small Group. That group was tasked with managing threats posed by foreign hackers during the 2018 midterm elections. 

The new group is expected to be operational by this October. According to the NSA website, the "Cybersecurity Directorate is a major organization that unifies NSA's foreign intelligence and cyber defense missions and is charged with preventing and eradicating threats to National Security Systems and the Defense Industrial Base." The website also says, "This new approach to cybersecurity will better position NSA to collaborate with key partners across the U.S. government like U.S. Cyber Command, Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

That sounds good on the surface, but will this new group make a significant impact in what we can more easily identify as the embryonic stages of World War 3? There have been several reshufflings over the past few years at the Department of Homeland Security as well as at the highest levels of America's so-called "Cyber Command." These changes include the passage of the bipartisan Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Act, which rebranded DHS's main cyber-security unit, known as the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency or CISA. This designated CISA as a full-fledged operational component of DHS, similar to the Secret Service or FEMA.

The White House also eliminated the position of cyber-security coordinator in April of 2018. Former White House cyber-security coordinator Rob Joyce vacated that post to return to the NSA amid a shakeup that also saw Joyce's boss, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, pushed out of his position by national security adviser John Bolton.

Continuity and consistency will be key to American cyber-defense efforts as the newest theater of war continues to heat up. Just last month, the New York Times reported that the United States had executed hacking attacks against Russia's power grid. The speculation is that these attacks were, in part, a response to the supposed election meddling that was the central theme of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

These revelations came on the heels of a two-pronged cyber-attack that not only disabled a computer network, but could also interfere with half the production of the conventional weapons of war. The April 2019 attack against raw material–producer Norsk Hydro created a blueprint for state-sponsored hacks that could be executed in the event of total war. The attack was carried out using a malware strain known as LockerGoga. 

Malware, a nuisance mainly thought to hold value only for profiteers on the "dark web," has long found a militaristic purpose. Many experts point to the malware attack of Iran's nuclear program in the beginning of this decade as the genesis of cyber-warfare. As technology and creativity continue to evolve, the United States will have its work cut out for it, with high-leverage targets like infrastructure serving as low-hanging fruit for countries at a militaristic disadvantage against America. 

Now more than ever, agencies like the newly forming Cybersecurity Directorate will play a critical role in our nation's defense strategy.


Julio Rivera is a NYC-based writer, news personality, columnist, business consultant, and editorial director for Reactionary Times. His writing, which is concentrated on politics, cyber-security, and sports, has been published by websites including Newsmax, The Washington Times, Breitbart, The Toronto Sun, The Hill, The Washington Examiner, Western Journal, LifeZette, Townhall, American Thinker, The Epoch Times, Real Clear Markets, PJ Media, and many others. He is a fixture on cable news talk shows, making regular appearances on American and international television.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/has_world_war_3_already_begun_the_nsa_may_know_something.html

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An English Misunderstanding of Iran - Amir Taheri

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by Amir Taheri

The Khomeinist rulers of Iran have perfected the art of diplomatic cheat-retreat-advance.

• Jack Straw's misunderstanding, perhaps caused by his "absolute infatuation" with his imaginary Iran, has three aspects.
• The first is that he thinks that because Iran is an ancient civilization -- and has produced great poets, weaves exquisite carpets and offers one of the world's hautes cuisines -- it deserves indulgence for its weird activities in other domains such as hostage-taking, hate-mongering, human rights violations and the export of terror in the name of revolution. It is like granting Stalin indulgence because one appreciates Pushkin and Tchaikovsky and enjoys a dish of borscht with a glass of "little water" on the side.
• The trouble is that Straw is unable to cite a single reform proposed, let alone carried out, by his "reformist" faction in Tehran. Worse still, he forgets that there have been more executions and political arrests under Khatami and Rouhani than during the presidency of the supposedly "hardline" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
• Straw offers no evidence than any deal made with the Islamic Republic in the past 40 years has had a long-lasting impact on the Khomeinist strategy and behavior. The Khomeinist rulers of Iran have perfected the art of diplomatic cheat-retreat-advance. Whenever their bones began to creak, they offered some concessions, which were subsequently withdrawn once the crushing of the bones ceased. More importantly, perhaps, Straw fails to realize that his "moderates" including Rouhani and Khatami, lack the popular support base needed to marginalize Khamenei let alone get rid of him.

Former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's new book, The English Job, which promises to help the reader in "understanding Iran," may best be described as a misunderstanding of Iran today -- a misunderstanding that has prevented Britain, along with other Western powers, from developing a realistic Iran policy. Pictured: Straw (left) meets with then Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on September 25, 2001 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Keivan/Getty Images)

The English Job
Understanding Iran and Why It Distrusts Britain
By Jack Straw
390 pages; published by Biteback Books, London 2019.

The subtitle of Jack Straw's new book promises to help the reader in "understanding Iran".

However, what one gets in 390 pages may best be described as a misunderstanding of Iran today -- a misunderstanding that has prevented Britain, along with other Western powers, from developing a realistic Iran policy and has helped prolong the crisis caused by the Islamic Republic's unorthodox behavior in the international arena.

Straw's misunderstanding, perhaps caused by his "absolute infatuation" with his imaginary Iran, has three aspects.

The first is that he thinks that because Iran, as he reminds the reader, is an ancient civilization -- and has produced great poets, weaves exquisite carpets and offers one of the world's hautes cuisines -- it deserves indulgence for its weird activities in other domains such as hostage-taking, hate-mongering, human rights violations and the export of terror in the name of revolution. It is like granting Stalin indulgence because one appreciates Pushkin and Tchaikovsky and enjoys a dish of borscht with a glass of "little water" on the side. In another register, what would you say if we gave Hitler a pass because we like Schiller, Beethoven and potato salad? That Cyrus the Great was a great king and, arguably, even the founder of human rights, as Straw suggests, does not justify, to cite just one example, the mass murder of Syrians by a mercenary army led by the Iranian mullahs.

The second "misunderstanding" concerns Straw's strange belief that the Khomeinist ruling elite includes a "reformist" faction that desires close relations with Western democracies, and must, therefore, be supported to weaken and eventually get rid of the "hardline" faction led by "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But, who are the "reformists" Straw claims to have discovered in Tehran? He cites a number of names among them former Presidents Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, the current President Hassan Rouhani, former presidential candidates Mir-Hussein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi -- both under house arrest -- and lower rank current or former officials such as Muhammad-Javad Zarif, Kamal Kharrazi whom Straw calls " my old friend", and Mostafa Tajzadeh.

The trouble is that Straw is unable to cite a single reform proposed, let alone carried out, by his "reformist" faction in Tehran. Worse still, he forgets that there have been more executions and political arrests under Khatami and Rouhani than during the presidency of the supposedly "hardline" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The third misunderstanding is that in dealing with the Islamic Republic, all choice is limited to just two options: swallowing whatever Iran does or launching a full-scale war against it.

Straw was one of the most zealous advocates of war to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, asserting that the Ba'athist regime was beyond reform.

However, when it comes to the Islamic Republic, the former British Foreign Secretary becomes a dyed-in-wool peacenik. He claims that the only sane way is to use diplomacy to change Tehran's behavior. In an elliptic manner, Straw claims some credit for what we now know as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the "Iran nuclear deal" concocted by the Obama administration. Straw first sold the idea to President George W. Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006 just before his boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair, moved him to another post.

In the past two decades, Straw has visited Iran seven times, five as Foreign Secretary. In one visit, he was part of a British parliamentary delegation with former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lamont and the current Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who was then working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Press TV channel. In one private visit, he and his wife, along with a couple of friends, were harassed and in the end hounded out of Iran by one of the nine security agencies operating in the Islamic Republic.

Straw is critical of President Donald J. Trump for rejecting secret diplomacy while Tehran's leaders see any public attempt at rapprochement as humiliating for their regime. He claims that the "nuclear deal" might have been complemented with further secret talks about other issues of interest to Western powers, including the Islamic Republic's intrusion in the internal affairs of Arab countries. The first JCPOA could have been followed by other JCPOAs, even dealing with human rights issues, with the ultimate aim of marginalizing and eventually clipping the wings of the "Supreme Guide".

Nevertheless, Straw offers no evidence than any deal made with the Islamic Republic in the past 40 years has had a long-lasting impact on the Khomeinist strategy and behavior. The Khomeinist rulers of Iran have perfected the art of diplomatic cheat-retreat-advance. Whenever their bones began to creak, they offered some concessions, which were subsequently withdrawn once the crushing of the bones ceased. More importantly, perhaps, Straw fails to realize that his "moderates" including Rouhani and Khatami, lack the popular support base needed to marginalize Khamenei let alone get rid of him.

Straw has adopted a number of erroneous assumptions, commonplace among so-called "Iran analysts", including the division of authorities in the Khomeinist system between elected and un-elected officials. In that context we are invited to believe that Khamenei, supposedly un-elected, enjoys less legitimacy than, say Rouhani, who is elected. However, the fact is that the Assembly of Experts, itself elected by popular vote, elects Khamenei. At the same time, Rouhani, like his predecessors, could not become president without an edict (hukm tanfizi) from the "Supreme Guide". In other words, it matters not one farthing who is or isn't elected in a system in which all elections must either be regarded of equal value or rejected as fake from the start.

Straw is also wrong in believing that the Islamic Majlis, which he wrongly calls "The Iranian Consultative Assembly", is subordinate to the Council of the Guardians which he calls, again wrongly, as solely "a creature of the Supreme Guide".

To buttress his assumption that the mullahs have an almost natural claim to ruling Iran, Straw exaggerates the role played by Shi'ite clerics in Iranian politics over the past five centuries. A fatwa issued by an obscure ayatollah to forbid smoking tobacco is blown out of proportion as an earth-shaking event. Clerics did play a role in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, but only as second fiddle. The mullahs also supported the Shah in dismissing Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadeq in 1953, an event that Straw dubs a "coup d'état" plotted by British Intelligence and the CIA. The fact that the Shah had already appointed and dismissed Mussadeq as prime minister on two previous occasions without anyone talking of coup d'état is conveniently ignored.

Straw hates the Pahlavi Shahs and tries hard to present them in as bad a light as possible, perhaps to justify the mullahs' revolt in 1979.

Straw also exaggerates the role the British played in Iran. Iran's own corrupt ruling elite, especially in the final decades of Qajar rule, used intervention by Britain and Russia, the two imperialist enemies of Iran at the time, as an excuse to explain away their own corruption and ineptitude.

No foreign power could impose its will on even the weakest nations without the assistance of at least some elements in that nation's ruling elite. True, the Persian expression "It's all the work of the English!" reflects abiding resentment about the role played by Britain in Iranian affairs for over a century. However, the expression is more often used as a joke rather than a serious comment on history. There was never a major British human presence in Iran. Few Iranians ever saw even a single specimen of the vilified "Inglisi". The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was operating in less than one per cent of Iranian territory, and at its peak employed fewer than 200 non-Iranians, most of them Sikh guards and drivers from Punjab. Also, Britain never featured among Iran's top five trading partners and couldn't compete with France and Germany, and from the 1960's onwards with the United States, as poles of attraction for Iranians seeking higher education abroad. In the 1960s when I was a student in London, there were under 200 Iranian students in Great Britain. At the same time, Iranian students in West Germany numbered 3,000 and in the United States 8,000.

The British did invade Iran, in conjunction with the Soviets, in 1941, not 1942 as Straw says, but did not "occupy the whole of Iran" as he seems to believe. In fact, the British Expeditionary Force, largely consisting of recruits from colonial India, were stationed in five localities in Iran and from 1943 onwards were under US command until total withdrawal two years later. The myth of "the English Job", like its French equivalent "perfide Albion", is designed to perpetuate enmity between two nations that, when all is said and done, experienced the attraction-revulsion that marks many human relations in history.

The popular novel Dear Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad uses the "this is an English job" cliché as a joke. Incidentally, it was written in 1970, not in the 1940s as Straw asserts.

Straw's book, an enjoyable read, includes too many factual errors and dicey speculations to be cited here. I doubt if Ayatollah Khamenei's second son Mujtaba has any chance of succeeding him as "Supreme Guide", even if the regime survives. Straw also exaggerates the status of Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who now heads the Expediency Council. Straw admires Larijani because he speaks "fluent English" but the fact is that he lacks a genuine status within the Shi'ite clergy.

Khamenei's mother tongue is not "Turkic", a non-existent language, but Persian as his mother hailed from Isfahan and claimed descent from the poet Kamaleddin Ismail. Khamenei's father was from Azerbaijan and spoke Azeri, an Altaic language with a heavy dose of Persian vocabulary.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini couldn't have extensive knowledge of Greek philosophy, as most works by the Greeks, including Plato and Aristotle cited by Straw, are still not translated into Persian or any other languages of the Muslim world.

Some of Straw's assertions are too weird to merit comment. For example, he says: "Iran is the most secular of societies, people laugh at what the mullahs have to say."

And, yet, he believes that mullahs are bound to rule Iran seemingly forever. But even then, he is not sure of his analysis. He writes: "Just below the surface, Iran is far from calm. The regime is going one way; the majority of the population the other."

From an apologist for the Islamic Republic, this is something!

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14585/the-english-job-jack-straw

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2020 Census Citizenship Controversy Exposes True Open Borders Agenda - Tom Tancredo

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by Tom Tancredo

The vehement opposition to the 2020 Census question on citizenship is a symptom of a deep divide in the body politic

As usual, the dustup about the census including a question about citizenship has nothing to do with what the loony left claims as their motivation to exclude it. They say it’s all about being sensitive to the hurt feelings and paranoia of people who are illegally present in the U.S. And, by the way, asking the question it is not a Donald Trump trick to ferret out those folks who are hiding under their blankets, afraid that the next knock on the door will be the jackbooted ICE agents, come to drag them from their beds and put them on boxcars headed for concentration camps.

A brief history lesson here. The Constitution of the United States directs the President to conduct a Census every ten years, and that has been done without controversy since 1790. And with rare exceptions, the question on citizenship has been part of it from the beginning. Yet, its inclusion in the 2020 Census has become controversial. The reasons for the opposition to the citizenship question tell us a lot about the declining health of our American constitutional republic.

The vehement opposition to the 2020 Census question on citizenship is a symptom of a deep divide in the body politic, a chasm that only grows wider and deeper as politicians postpone a decision over the meaning of the Constitution's opening words, "We the People."

There is a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon separating individuals who believe that "We the People" means we the citizens of the United States and those who believe it means, we the global citizens who temporarily inhabit this territory. To one group having an accurate count of both citizens and noncitizens resident in each state is vital to the constitutional purposes of the Census, but to the "global citizen" contingent that count is not only unnecessary, it is slanderous, racist and, well -- undemocratic!

It is important to understand that this debate over the 2020 Census's citizen/noncitizen numbers is not a debate over counting illegal immigrants residing in the United States. This controversy goes deeper than the debate over whether the official U.S. Census estimate of 11.3 million illegal aliens resident in the country is accurate or woefully inaccurate.

The political resistance to the traditional citizenship question as part of the decennial Census derives its passion and intensity from the ideological goal of transforming the nature of political representation in our republic. In that world, an elected representative in any city council, school board, county commission, state legislature, Board of Regents, or the U. .Congress, is duty bound to represent any resident of his or her district with the same passion and integrity whether that resident be a citizen, a Chinese or German foreign student at a local university, a legal resident alien born in Egypt or an illegal alien who swam across the Rio Grande. Should foreign students at the University of Colorado vote in Boulder city elections? Why not, if every "person" is entitled to "equal representation"?

The population count produced by the 2020 Census will be the foundation for Congress' adoption of revised apportionment of the 435 seats in Congress. Does a new apportionment based on new Census numbers mean a count based on all persons, all citizens, or something else? Such questions will be debated in Congress and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court before we know the answers, but the debate must begin with an accurate count in the Census. Will we get one?

When the national debate over illegal immigration and border security was heating up back in 2005 and 2006 in response to amnesty proposals in Congress, I was roundly criticized for suggesting the opposition to amnesty was rooted in opposition to secure borders. I was attacked by some prominent leaders of the Republican Party for saying that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce saw illegal aliens as cheap labor and the Democrat Party saw them as future Democratic voters. I take no pleasure in observing in 2019 that Democratic leaders in Congress are aggressively advocating open borders as a path to a permanent Democratic majority. And there is an even bigger picture that elitist leftists are trying to paint for us all. They want no borders, no allegiance to a nation state, no citizenship classification connected to a single country. 

They want a kumbaya world of global citizens that can be governed by people who “know better.” Think I am wrong? Try to find a recent college or high school grad who can tell you what it means to be an American other than by saying it means abiding in a place called America. The members of what I call the Cult of Multiculturalism infect our schools, our media, and pop culture. The philosophy permeates the West -- its repercussions and can be seen playing out all over Europe.

Only a short decade ago, a world-famous Harvard political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington, wrote a landmark book aptly titled Who Are We? America’s National Identity Crisis. He believed that America's unprecedented achievements and unparalleled prosperity had their foundation in our nation's European heritage, a heritage under siege by the formidable forces of multiculturalism. So eliminating the citizenship question in the Census is a just another step down the road to the elitist utopia promised by Marx and Engels.

Eventually we will come to the step when jackbooted government agents really will be pulling people out of their beds and sending them off to “re-education” camps.” After all, some people might resist the America that Barack Obama promised to thoroughly transform.

Tom Tancredo (R_CO),  Former U.S. Congressman,serves as Advisory Board Member for We Build The Wall. He was author of the famous Bush Era book called In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/2020_census_citizenship_controversy_exposes_true_open_borders_agenda.html

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16 Muslim Countries Endorse China Forcing Muslims to Eat Pork - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

What really effective diplomacy looks like.

The war of letters began when 22 countries penned a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning China's treatment of Uighurs and "other Muslim and minorities communities."

The letter in defense of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang was signed by France, Germany, Canada, Sweden and 18 other, mostly Western and European, countries. The case of the missing Muslim signatories was solved when the People’s Republic of China fired back with its own letter signed by 37 countries.

This letter in defense of China’s crackdown on Islam was signed by 16 Muslim countries.
While some of the Muslim signatories were drawn from African countries, the letter was also signed by ambassadors for the leading Arab governments including Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Kuwait. Pakistan, the world’s second largest Muslim country, also signed on.

While Western governments wailed about Muslim human rights in China, the leading Sunni nations of the world signed off on a letter praising “China's remarkable achievements in the field of human rights.” Mandatory abortions, organ harvesting and the mass murder of millions are remarkable achievements.

No doubt about it.

The world’s top Muslim governments didn’t just settle for abstract praise of China’s human rights. Instead they explicitly defended China’s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang.

“Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers," the letter reads. "The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security.”

The war of letters humiliated Western governments which had failed to convince a single Muslim country to sign on to a letter criticizing China’s crackdown on Muslims. And they humiliated the Muslim signatories who demonstrated that China could intimidate them into endorsing a crackdown on Islam.

The People’s Republic of China’s idea of de-radicalization measures had allegedly included forcing Muslims to drink alcohol and eat pork, a ban on beards, hijabs and the name Mohammed.

Even Qatar, whose Al Jazeera propaganda outlet has broadcast claims of Islamist oppression in Xinjiang, was finally forced to sign on to a letter that effectively disavowed what its own media has been saying.

The Uyghur Muslims are a Turkic minority, its Islamists had sought to set up a separatist Turkic Islamic state, and the Islamist regime in Turkey had been vocal about their cause. Erdogan, the Islamist thug running Turkey, had in the past accused China of genocide. This year, the spokesman for Turkey’s foreign ministry had described China’s crackdown on Islamists as a “great cause of shame for humanity”. The spokesman had accused China of engaging in torture and brainwashing in concentration camps.

But then Erdogan, the most aggressive national exponent of Islamist causes in the region, visited China, and declared, “It is a fact that the peoples of China’s Xinjiang region live happily in China’s development and prosperity.” Then he told critics to keep quiet to avoid spoiling Turkey’s relationship with the PRC.

The People’s Republic of China had attained the complicity of the world’s most vocal Turkish nationalist in its crackdown on Turkic nationalism and won the support of the tyrant who had transformed Turkey from a secular democracy into an Islamist banana republic for its enforced secularization of Muslims.

It’s hard to imagine a greater diplomatic triumph.

Finally, the letters humiliated the United States, which had not signed on to either one, but, despite providing protection and billions of dollars in foreign aid to Muslim countries, has been repeatedly attacked for its limited counterterrorism efforts which fall far short of anything that the PRC has done.

Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have long been thorns in America’s side, backing Islamic terrorists abroad, funding subversion within the United States, and criticizing our counterterrorism.

What does China have that we don’t?

Few of the 16 Muslim countries on the list are worried about the PRC’s military force. Instead, the Communist dictatorship has effectively leveraged its economic power in its national interest.

It has also made it clear that it will not tolerate criticism of its domestic policies.

China was able to get not only Muslim countries, but the worldwide sponsors of Islamism, to sign on to its letter because they understood that crossing the PRC would carry a serious economic price.

The United States hands out foreign aid and trade agreements to countries no matter what they do.

After getting caught harboring Osama bin Laden, we’re still dispensing at least $370 million in foreign aid to Pakistan. That’s down from $2.7 billion at the height of the Obama era. But still no small sum.

The PRC would never dole out $370 million to a country involved in undermining its national security.

But in the United States, cutting off foreign aid to a country, no matter how awful, is nearly impossible. The worse a country treats us, the harder we work to win that country over with extensive outreach.

The US Combined Air Operations Center continues to sit at Al Udeid Air Base despite the Qataris spending decades demonstrating to us that they will back the very Jihadist operators we are fighting. We began using the base even after a member of the Qatari royal family got caught harboring Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the Al Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

The People’s Republic of China doesn’t view insults and threats as an incentive for outreach. Instead it uses its economic clout to reward or punish countries based on how those countries treat it.

Of all the many derivative shiny products coming out of China, that’s one we might want to copy.

American diplomacy has a fantastic track record of failure. The only thing it ever really seems to succeed at is giving away money and abandoning our national interests to pursue meaningless global goals.

That includes our own feeble efforts to agitate on behalf of the Islamists in Xinjiang.

The PRC does not dedicate its diplomacy to saving the planet, ending all wars, or any of the delusional nonsense that occupies American diplomats in between expensive lunches and pointless conferences. Its diplomacy is a blunt instrument meant to achieve simple ends. And, that makes it far more effective.

The war of letters demonstrated that China could recruit 16 Muslim countries to endorse forcing Muslims to eat pork, while Western countries couldn’t get even one to sign on in opposition.

That diplomatic humiliation should be educational. Sadly, it won’t teach the Europeans anything.

But there are important lessons in the war of letters for America.

America spends a great deal of time worrying about being loved. Our diplomacy is meant to convince the world to love us. China does not need to be loved. It never apologizes for its strength.

We should stop apologizing for our strength. And start putting our national interests first.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274363/16-muslim-countries-endorse-china-forcing-muslims-daniel-greenfield

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Israeli Election Still a Wild Card - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

The final issue that will determine whether or not Netanyahu forms the next government.

Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister on Friday, and he is favored to win the next elections in September. But the outcome is still uncertain.

On Sunday, the President tweeted: “Congratulations to Bibi @Netanyahu on becoming the longest serving PM in the history of Israel. Under your leadership, Israel has become a technology powerhouse and a world class economy….”

He continued: “….Most importantly you have led Israel with a commitment to the values of democracy, freedom, and equal opportunity that both our nations cherish and share!”

Netanyahu quickly thanked Trump for his support, tweeting, “Thank you, President Trump, for your warm words, outstanding support & incredible friendship. I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with you. Under your leadership, we’ve made the alliance between our two remarkable countries stronger than ever. I know there’s more to come.”

The exchange between the two leaders is a testament to the strength of their relationship, perhaps the strongest relationship a U.S. president has ever had with an Israeli leader. The strength of their ties has played a key role in the rapid expansion of the U.S.-Israel alliance during Trump’s tenure.

To get a sense of how intimate the relations have become, consider the reports in the Arab media regarding last Thursday’s mysterious airstrike against an Iranian missile base in Nineveh province in Iraq. According to the Arab media, Israeli bombers carried out the bombing after taking off from a U.S. airbase along the tri-border between Israel, Jordan and Syria.

The allegations themselves show that the Arabs and the Iranians view U.S.-Israel ties to be deeper and far more operational than ever before.

In light of the unprecedented growth of U.S.-Israel ties under Trump and Netanyahu, it makes sense that Trump is frustrated that Netanyahu is now standing for election for the second time in a year.

Trump administration officials have reportedly expressed concerns to their Israeli interlocutors about Netanyahu’s political future and his possible successors in the event he is defeated in the September 17 elections.

To recall, Israel held general elections on April 9. Netanyahu and his Likud Party won a commanding mandate to form a governing coalition. Likud garnered 35 seats in Israel’s 120-member Knesset. Blue and White, the center-left party that competed against Likud, also won 35 seats, with slightly fewer votes. But overall, the center-right and right-wing parties won 55 percent of the vote, to the center-left and left’s 36 percent. The remainder of the vote went to Arab parties that traditionally have refused to join any governing coalition.

Despite the right/center-right’s commanding electoral victory, two obstacles blocked Netanyahu from forming a coalition government and compelled him to call for new elections.

First, Avigdor Liberman, Netanyahu’s former defense minister and the head of the small Israel Beitenu party, refused to join the coalition. Liberman’s party won five seats in April and so gave Netanyahu’s coalition a potential majority of 65 seats out of 120. By refusing to join the coalition, Liberman prevented Netanyahu from forming a governing majority.

The second reason Netanyahu was unable to form a government was the fragmentation of the ideological right wing. Just as elections were being called in December 2018, then-education minister Naftali Bennett and then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked announcedthat they were bolting their party and forming a new, more socially liberal party called the New Right. (Full disclosure: the author ran as a candidate on the New Right list.) Also running was a former Likud lawmaker named Moshe Feiglin, whose Zehut party shared similar positions on social and economic issues the New Right.

That splintered the ideological right. Israel’s electoral law requires parties to win a minimum of 3.25 percent of the overall vote, which translates into four Knesset seats, to cross the electoral threshold. Cumulatively, the New Right and Zehut won 6 percent of the vote, the equivalent of seven Knesset seats. But neither of them crossed the threshold. The right lost seven seats it would otherwise have run, and Netanyahu lost the ability to form a government without Liberman.

Liberman insisted that his refusal to join Netanyahu’s government owed to his opposition to the ultra-Orthodox parties that form the core of the Likud’s natural coalition partners. But neither the general public nor the Israeli commentariat believed his claims. The two men have a thirty-year relationship that has known its ups and downs. Most Israelis believe that Liberman was motivated by hatred of Netanyahu. Once it was clear that the election results gave Liberman the power to block Netanyahu from forming a government, Liberman was in a position to dictate his terms for joining the coalition. Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties were willing to accept his demands. The fact that Liberman still refused to make a deal demonstrated that his desire to destroy Netanyahu politically outweighed rational political calculations.

The polling data taken since the election in April indicates that there has been no movement along the right-left political spectrum. Fifty-five percent of Israelis still identify with the right and center-right. And Netanyahu remains the leader that the public wishes to see in standing at the helm of the next government.

At the same time, the repeat elections that Liberman was able to instigate due to the fragmentation of the ideological right revolve around one issue: Netanyahu.

On the left, parties are being formed and organized around this issue. Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak reentered the political fray as the head of a new party – the Israel Democratic Party – with the sole agenda of unseating Netanyahu. Blue and White also insists it will not join a coalition government with Netanyahu.

The main dispute that seems to be animating and fragmenting the left in fact is whether any of the parties in the bloc will be willing to join a coalition led by Netanyahu. Labor Party leader Amir Peretz, a former union leader and avowed socialist, forged a coalition with another socialist party last week. Both he and his new partner, Gesher Party leader Orly Levy, have hinted that they will be willing to break ranks and join a Netanyahu-led coalition. If they follow through after the elections, they will neutralize Liberman’s power to make or break the next government.

On the right, three issues will determine whether the 55 percent of Israelis who favor right-wing or center-right parties will see the formation of a center-right government under Netanyahu’s leadership.

The first issue is whether the bloc without Liberman will have the requisite 61 Knesset seats to form a government . Current polling still gives Liberman the kingmaker role. But it is hard to credit polls so early on in the race.

The second question is what will happen on the ideological right. A week remains before the parties finalize their lists and submit them to the Central Elections Commission. Currently, negotiations are ongoing between Shaked and Bennett’s New Right party and the Jewish Home party they abandoned. The parties hope to unify and bring in another right-wing splinter party. If these negotiations succeed, the prospect of April’s vote dump repeating itself will diminish significantly. Netanyahu’s prospects of forming a government without Liberman will rise in turn.

The final issue that will determine whether or not Netanyahu forms the next government is whether and how many other politicians on the right will join Liberman in working to overthrow Netanyahu, even at the price of allowing the formation of a leftist government.

Within Likud, senior politicians have told Breitbart News that they will not permit a third election. “If Netanyahu can’t form a government this time around, he will be unseated,” one senior party official said. Several others agree.

They have also said clearly that they will prefer to form a government with Blue and White without Netanyahu than to hold a third election.

In short, while the Israeli public shares the Trump administration’s view that Netanyahu is the best man to lead Israel today, a handful of Israeli politicians in key positions would be willing if not happy to see him go.

The clarity of his expected mandate will determine whether these politicians – motivated by ambition and envy — succeed or fail.

Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274418/israeli-election-still-wild-card-caroline-glick

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