The Jews came as "invaders 70 years ago," no evidence of Jews before then - Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus

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by Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus

Breathtaking falsification, deception and fraud by PA officials and "respected" academicians

• Palestinian university lecturer: The Jews were never in Palestine, but came as “invaders 70 years ago”

• Palestinian archeologist: No archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine 3,000 years ago

• Palestinian author: The Zionist narrative has falsified history – the children of Israel were never in Palestine

Palestinian Authority policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Jews were never here, the PA says, until they came and “occupied” Palestine in 1948. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA habitually refutes the authenticity of the numerous archeological artifacts and non-Biblical sources that testify to the Jewish presence and nationhood thousands of years ago. The following are three recent examples of this Palestinian denial of Jewish presence and history, showing that the PA’s political message passed on by Palestinian leaders for decades has been successfully adopted and is being repeated even by Palestinian academics.

Riyad Al-Aileh, a Palestinian political science lecturer from Al-Azhar University, stated that Jews only came as ”invaders 70 years ago”:

"The Jews claim that they were in Palestine 2,000 years ago. If we look at the history we will see that they were not in Palestine in the past, but rather only as invaders less than 70 years ago. For these 70 years they have been invaders, like the Hyksos, the Byzantines, the Persians, and [British] colonialism. The Canaanite Palestinian people has since succeeded in defeating those invaders and continue [to live] in this land."

[Official PA TV, The Supreme Authority, Nov. 6, 2019]

Echoing this claim, Abir Zayyad, an archaeologist and member of Fatah’s Jerusalem branch, wrongly asserted that “no archaeological evidence” of Jews in Palestine has been found:

“We have no archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine in this historical period 3,000 years ago, neither in Jerusalem, nor in all of Palestine.”

[Official PA TV, Jerusalem: The Scent of History, Nov. 7, 2019]

Palestinian author Haidar Massad also reiterated the PA’s lie that “the children of Israel were never in Palestine”:

“I wrote a novel called The Palace that was published in 2019. This novel… is about the falsification of the historical geography in the Zionist and Talmudic (i.e., Jewish) narrative… The reader can establish… that in this land, Palestine, which has always been Arab – the children of Israel were never there.”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Oct. 6, 2019]

PA officials continue to repeat these false claims to Palestinians. Recently, PMW documented that the PA Minister of Culture taught Palestinians that “there is nothing in history that proves this presence. They have not found one stone.”




Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus

Source: https://palwatch.org/page/16899

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The Reign of the Prosecution - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

And Netanyahu’s call for investigation of the investigators.

Last Thursday in Israel, the politicians were the big story. Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman was the villain who had held the country hostage for nearly a year as he fed his narcissistic personality disorder.

The left’s latest flagship, the Blue and White Party, is all the once vibrant political camp can put together now that it has lost its ideology. With its deity of peace killed by suicide bombers and missiles, and its socialism statues crushed under the weight of bankrupt government companies, all the left has left is “blue and white.” The party stands on two planks: destroying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and eternalizing the regime of Israel’s unelected bureaucrats.

The party’s figurehead—Benny Gantz—was tempted to join a unity government with Netanyahu that would guarantee he served as prime minister under a rotation agreement. But his comrades wouldn’t let him. Joining a government with Netanyahu would be a betrayal of their very reason for existing. So, unhappily, he walked away.

And then there was Netanyahu himself. On Thursday, his supporters shook their heads in frustration and his enemies clapped their hands in glee at the sight of Israel’s greatest statesman, the leader the public wants to keep in office, unable to form a government.

The conversation about Israel’s politicians lasted less than 24 hours.

At four in the afternoon, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s office announced that at 7:30 in the evening he would announce his decision to indict Netanyahu. The underlying message was crystal clear: The day after Gantz returned his mandate to form a government to President Reuven Rivlin after he failed to get a sufficient number of coalition partners to build a government, Mandelblit ruled that there’s no point in talking about whether or not Israel is going to new elections in March.

Voters don’t decide anything. The lawyers do. Politicians are irrelevant. The only people who count in Israel today are the unelected attorneys who run the country.

But then we already knew that. And the fact that—as expected—Mandelblit announced sternly that he is indicting Netanyahu on three charges of breach of trust and one charge of bribery was at best anticlimactic. The game was up—if it was ever in play—in February.

Last February, at the height of the first election campaign of the year, when Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners were leading in all polls by a wide margin, Mandelblit took the unprecedented—and legally dubious—step of announcing his intention to indict Netanyahu on those charges—pending a pre-indictment hearing. The moment he made his announcement, the right began to slide in the polls. The Leader had spoken, and we had no right to question him.

Blue and White’s scattershot campaign converged around Mandelblit’s “recommendation.” The left had a rallying cry and a reason to vote. Netanyahu’s neck was on the chopping block.

Ever since Mandelblit gave his “recommendations,” he and his comrades have been the only political actors with any power to speak of. Our actual elected leaders were rendered bit players in the lawyers’ regime. Mandelblit’s announcement Thursday just made it official.

To the cheers of Israel’s corrupt media, for the past three years our legal overlords have gnawed away at all aspects of political power in Israel, and in the process—not that they cared—they corrupted Israel’s legal system from top to bottom. From beginning to end, their criminal persecution of Netanyahu has been a travesty of every norm in democratic societies governed by the rule of law.

Carefully edited and wholly distorted recordings and transcripts of police interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife, son and advisers were systematically leaked to the media. The fact that every such leak was a felony offense was of no matter. Netanyahu’s attorneys submitted request after request for Mandelblit to order an investigation of the criminal leaks. All were summarily and scornfully rejected.

As the probes escalated, overseen by State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, police investigators extorted Netanyahu’s closest advisers to coerce them into becoming state witnesses against the most successful and admired prime minister Israel has ever had. Investigators threatened Netanyahu’s former spokesman Nir Hefetz that they would destroy his family and bankrupt him if he didn’t turn on Netanyahu. They finally succeeded in breaking him after incarcerating him in a flea-infested jail cell for 15 nights, denying him sleep and medical treatment and bringing a young woman he knew into an interrogation room next to him and then threatening to destroy his family.

In the earlier stages of the probes, then police inspector general Roni Alsheich spun wild, unsubstantiated and frankly insane conspiracy theories about Netanyahu, including the claim that he hired private investigators to tail police investigators. Alsheich then went out of his way to prevent the government from appointing his successor as he approached the end of his term of service. Still today, more than a year later, Israel has no police inspector general.

Then, of course, there is Mandelblit himself. Mandelblit, who claims not to have known about the abuse of witnesses—but then refused to investigate the allegations. Mandelblit, who promised—after publishing his “recommendations” for indictment at the height of the election campaign—that he would approach Netanyahu’s pre-trial hearing with an open mind. That promise was exposed as a lie when the chief prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari left the hearing two days early to take her family on safari in South Africa. Wouldn’t want a little thing like the prime minister’s legal fate to ruin her chance to see the elephants.

The same Mandelblit refused to investigate Ben-Ari when recordings emerged last month showing that she submitted a false deposition to a court in relation to a lawsuit submitted against her by a former subordinate attorney.

Then, of course, there is the substance of the charges themselves. The charge that Netanyahu accepted a bribe is based on an invented notion that positive media coverage of a politician is bribery. The notion that press coverage can be considered bribery exists nowhere in the democratic world. No prosecutor in the world has ever indicted—or investigated—a politician or media organization of having committed bribery involving the provision of positive coverage.

Senior American jurists appeared before Mandelblit in Netanyahu’s (self-evidently unserious) pre-indictment hearing to warn him that pursuing bribery charges against politicians for receiving positive coverage is a recipe for destroying freedom of the press and democracy itself.

But then, that is the entire point of going after Netanyahu with invented crimes. Now that Netanyahu has been charged for bribery—and incidentally, he never even received positive coverage from the media organ accused of providing it—every politician that gets on the lawyers’ bad side will be sweating bricks any time a reporter writes something nice about him.

After Mandelblit made his prime-time announcement, Netanyahu pledged to fight for his freedom and for the restoration of Israeli democracy and the rule of law. In his speech Thursday night, he made an impassioned appeal to his “decent” political rivals to join him in this fight.

If any politicians doubt that Netanyahu’s struggle is their struggle, they should look no further than the prosecution’s announcement last week that it was opening a review, ahead of a criminal probe—of Gantz’s role in the so-called “Fifth Dimension Affair.” The Fifth Dimension was a start-up Gantz headed. Its sale for $14 million allegedly violated standard procedures.

Maybe Gantz did nothing wrong. But then, Netanyahu is being indicted for crimes that don’t exist. So it doesn’t matter. The message is clear: Every politician is at the mercy of the prosecutors. Fall out of line, and you will become a criminal suspect before you can say “prosecutorial abuse.”

It’s certainly true that the left shares the prosecutors’ hatred of Netanyahu; Blue and White exists to destroy him. But all the leftist politicians—and Lieberman—who are celebrating today need to understand that the Netanyahu they love to hate is their best friend and defender today. If Netanyahu is found guilty of crimes that were invented for the purpose of destroying him, then their goose will be cooked along with his.

Politicians may make us happy or sad, frustrated or infuriated. But today, in post-democratic Israel, it hardly matters. Netanyahu called last night for an “investigation of the investigators.” Unless our elected officials join forces to heed his call, they—and the voters who elected them—will never be relevant again.

Caroline Glick

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/reign-prosecution-caroline-glick/

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China Adopts Malicious "Cybersecurity" Rules - Gordon G. Chang

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by Gordon G. Chang

China takes aim at American companies through the new Cryptography Law

• After all these "cybersecurity" rules are in place, no foreign company may encrypt data so that it cannot be read by the Chinese central government and the Communist Party of China. In other words, businesses will be required to turn over encryption keys.
• Chinese officials will be permitted, under Chinese law, to share seized information with state enterprises. This means the enterprises will be able to use that information against their foreign competitors.
• The American people have an interest in China not taking control of American companies with operations in China--a probable consequence of the application of the December 1 and January 1 measures.
• The American people have a vital interest in the protection of American data. Trump should issue such an order immediately.

On January 1, China's Cryptography Law becomes effective. The legislation follows the December 1 implementation of the Multi-Level Protection Scheme 2.0, issued under the authority of the 2016 Cybersecurity Law.

Together, these measures show Beijing's absolute determination to seize from foreign companies all their communications, data, and other information stored in electronic form in China.

Beijing's complete visibility into the networks of foreign companies will have extremely disadvantageous consequences. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

President Trump should use his emergency powers to prohibit American companies from complying with the new rules or from storing data in China.

After all these "cybersecurity" rules are in place, no foreign company may encrypt data so that it cannot be read by the Chinese central government and the Communist Party of China. In other words, businesses will be required to turn over encryption keys.

Companies will also be prohibited from employing virtual private networks to keep data secret, and some believe they will no longer be allowed to use private servers.

Beijing's system, once implemented, will be so invasive that Chinese authorities will no longer need to ask foreign businesses to turn over data. Chinese officials will simply be able to take that data on their own.

"Once data crosses the Chinese border on a network," writes Steve Dickinson in the China Law Blog, "100 percent of that data will be 100 percent available to the Chinese government and the CCP."

Beijing's complete visibility into the networks of foreign companies will have extremely disadvantageous consequences, Dickinson notes. First, Chinese officials will be permitted, under Chinese law, to share seized information with state enterprises. This means the enterprises will be able to use that information against their foreign competitors.

Second, China's new rules will almost certainly result in foreign companies losing trade secret protection around the world. A trade secret loses its status as such when it is widely disclosed. Once a company allows such a secret to be carried on its Chinese network, the company has to assume Beijing will know it. "Since no company can reasonably assume its trade secrets will remain secret once transmitted into China over a Chinese controlled network, they are at great risk of having their trade secret protections outside China evaporating as well," writes Dickinson.

Third, China's cybersecurity program exposes companies to penalties for violating U.S. tech-export legislation. Businesses have assumed that technology covered by U.S. export prohibitions is not "exported" if it is kept on a Chinese network protected by end-to-end encryption, in other words, not available to Chinese authorities. Because companies will no longer be permitted to encrypt data end-to-end, they will almost certainly be considered as violating U.S. rules for tech stored on a network in China.

Not every analyst is alarmed by China's December 1 measures. James Andrew Lewis, for instance, maintains that Beijing's new rules are a "legitimate effort" to secure networks in China. Moreover, he argues the Chinese do not need the new MLPS 2.0 rules to grab information because they can just steal all they want with their advanced "APT" hacker groups. "Their intent is not to use it for malicious purposes," Lewis argues, referring to Chinese officials.

It is not clear how Lewis, a tech expert at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can know the intent of China's officials. Furthermore, portraying that intent as benign seems naive—laughable even—while their country is stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of American intellectual property each year and while Chinese ruler Xi Jinping continues his determined attacks on foreign business. In these circumstances, we have to assume Chinese officials are acting with malign intent.

Lewis also downplays the basic point that China's cyber spies, once they have the encryption keys and access to the China network of a foreign firm, will be in a better position to penetrate the networks of that firm outside China. Therefore, it will only be a matter of time before Beijing steals data and puts companies out of business or ruins them to the point where Chinese entities can swoop in and buy them up cheap. Many allege that China stole data from Canada's Nortel Networks and thereby bankrupted it almost a decade ago. The company was, according to the Financial Post, "hacked to pieces."

Finally, CSIS's Lewis fails to recognize that Beijing's December 1 rules generally legitimize China's regulation and information-custody role--in other words, China's theft.

Senator Josh Hawley is rightly more suspicious of Beijing's intentions. In November, the Missouri Republican introduced a bill, the National Security and Data Protection Act of 2019, prohibiting American companies from storing user data or encryption keys in China. Of course, this bill faces opposition from tech companies doing business in that country.

Yet, there is someone who can, with the stroke of a pen, effectively implement Hawley's bill. President Donald John Trump can use his broad powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to prohibit companies from complying with the pernicious new rules or from storing data in China.

The rationale for such a sweeping presidential order is that the American people have an interest in China not taking control of American companies with operations in China--a probable consequence of the application of the December 1 and January 1 measures.

Such an emergency order would effectively force American companies out of China, so this step would be drastic. Yet it is China, with its incredibly ambitious grab of data, that is forcing the issue.

The American people have a vital interest in the protection of American data. Trump should issue such an order immediately.

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Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15230/china-adopts-malicious-cybersecurity-rules

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Who Are the Racists? - Walter Williams

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by Walter Williams

Black people can't afford to remain fodder for the leftist agenda.

Former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said that racism in America is "foundational" and that people of color were under "mortal threat" from the "white supremacist in the White House." Pete Buttigieg chimed in to explain that "systemic racism" will "be with us" no matter who is in the White House. Senator Cory Booker called for "attacking systemic racism" in the "racially biased" criminal justice system.

Let's follow up by examining Booker's concern about a "racially biased" criminal justice system. To do that, we can turn to a recent article by Heather Mac Donald, who is a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent article, "A Platform of Urban Decline," which appeared in Manhattan Institute's publication Eye On The News, addresses race and crime. She reveals government statistics you've never read before.

According to leftist rhetoric, whites pose a severe, if not mortal, threat to blacks. Mac Donald says that may have once been true, but it is no longer so today. To make her case, she uses the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 survey of criminal victimization. Mac Donald writes: "According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent. That ratio is becoming more skewed, despite the Democratic claim of Trump-inspired white violence. In 2012-13, blacks committed 85 percent of all interracial victimizations between blacks and whites; whites committed 15 percent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of white victims and the incidence of white victimization have grown as well."

There are other stark figures not talked about often. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting for 2018, of the homicide victims for whom race was known, 53.3% were black, 43.8% were white and 2.8% were of other races. In cases where the race of the offender was known, 54.9% were black, 42.4% were white, and 2.7% were of other races.

White and black liberals, who claim that blacks face a "mortal threat" from the "white supremacist in the White House" are perpetuating a cruel hoax. The primary victims of that hoax are black people. We face the difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, task of confronting reality.

Mac Donald says that Barack Obama's 2008 Father's Day speech in Chicago would be seen today as an "unforgivable outburst of white supremacy." Here's what Obama told his predominantly black audience in a South Side church: "If we are honest with ourselves," too many fathers are "missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men." Then-Senator Obama went on to say, "Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."

White liberals deem that any speaker's references to personal responsibility brands the speaker as bigoted. Black people cannot afford to buy into the white liberal agenda. White liberals don't pay the same price. They don't live in neighborhoods where their children can get shot simply sitting on their porches. White liberals don't go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. White liberals don't live in neighborhoods that have become economic wastelands. Their children don't attend violent schools where they have to enter through metal detectors. White liberals help the Democratic Party maintain political control over cities, where many black residents live in despair, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago.

Black people cannot afford to remain fodder for the liberal agenda. With that in mind, we should not be a one-party people in a two-party system.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/who-are-racists-walter-williams/

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Cutting through all the nonsense after the indictments - Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

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by Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

The charges on which Netanyahu has been indicted are absolutely non-indictable in a democracy like the United States. Major legal scholars like Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Nathan Lewin, and Prof. Avi Bell have laid it out so clearly — and so often.

It is amazing how much utter nonsense and demagoguery has been flying in Israel since the indictments of Prime Minister Netanyahu were announced by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Herewith some reality checking:

1. Liat Ben Ari, the district attorney who led the probes against Netanyahu, missed two of the four days when the Prime Minister’s team presented their most comprehensive portfolio of new evidence and arguments. She attended two days, then flew out of the country on a vacation. That may be unprecedented in the annals of legal history — anywhere. It is unfathomable how she could just skip out and how Mandelblit could permit it without at least rescheduling the calendar for the defense to present its case after she returned with her suntan. A serious legal system in any other democratic country would not function that way.

2. Israel’s Left has a paranoiac and demagogic reflex motion, akin to a twitch, by which they scream “Our Democracy Is Threatened!  Our Democracy Is Threatened!” every time their center-right opposition criticizes them or their corrupt institutions.

There is absolutely nothing “anti-democratic” or “threatening to a democracy” when concerned and serious voices sharply criticize a legal system that is pocked and distorted by aspects of pure corruption and evil. Quite the contrary: only in an anti-democratic Police State do we find that police and government officials are beyond criticism. In America, which is at least as democratic (even on a bad day) than Israel is (on a good day), Republicans at the highest echelons publicly called James Comey, the director of the country’s FBI — the nation’s primary police force — a corrupt serial liar.  They called Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, corrupt. They called her predecessor, Eric Holder, corrupt. 

And they were absolutely correct. The whole bunch of them were rotten. You can google “comey corrupt” and read the 5,130,000 results.  Or “eric holder corrupt” and read the 1,300,000 results. (Holder was much more honest. . . . ) Or “loretta lynch corrupt” and read the only 140,000 results. (She was not less corrupt, only was in office for less time.)  Nowadays, with reversed roles, Democrats call Attorney General William Barr, who actually is one of the most honest and ethical people in American government in years, corrupt. Google that one, and you will get 1,600,000 results.

America is a democracy. Those allegations do not threaten that democracy. And the same goes in America for attacks on the Supreme Court and the whole federal judicial system. Conservatives roundly criticize the corruptness of the Obama Judges who keep wielding insane power to stop every executive initiative advocated by President Trump, and Liberals not only attack the conservatives on the Supreme Court but fabricate the most despicable lies, accusing with complete deceit a decent honorable family man and devout Catholic of being a rapist, and announcing their corrupt plans to add as many more Leftist judges to the Supreme Court as it takes to give them a Leftist judicial majority the next time the Democrats rise to power.

3. In other words, it is OK for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Justice Minister Amir Ohana to attack Avichai Mandelblit, Liat Ben Ari, corruption in the Israeli justice and police sectors, and to accuse the whole corps of rotten apples as rotten to the core.

The real threat to Israeli democracy is a corrupt justice system, a corrupt police system, a corrupt journalist corps, and a conspiracy by all of them to suppress the legitimate criticism of their effort to overturn the will of the voters and to impose a coup.  Just look at how they got Nir Hefetz to turn.  What a disgusting blackmail system! 

Understandably, Israeli security demands exercising extraordinary techniques when investigating Arab terrorists and potential “ticking time bombs.” Along the way, the Israeli police and justice system have adopted aspects of outright corruption and techniques that are repugnant to a civil democracy.

Justice Minister Ohana is right. So is the Prime Minister. It is not “incitement” to assert that the matter smacks of a “coup.”  The charges on which he has been indicted are absolutely non-indictable in a democracy like the United States. Major legal scholars like Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Nathan Lewin, and Prof. Avi Bell have laid it out so clearly — and so often.

4. What kind of democracy leaves in the hands of one unelected person the decision whether to take down a duly elected head of government? In the United States, it takes a majority vote of the 435-member House of Representatives, followed by a two-thirds vote of the United States Senate. All those 535 people have been elected to their posts. By contrast, Israel places in the hands of one unelected person, Avichai Mandelblit, a man who cannot even keep his prosecutor in the country and insist that she delay her vacation during the critical days when the defense presents its portfolio of evidence and legal arguments, the power to throw the country into chaos.

5. Benny Gantz is no less a demagogue than is the description he assigns to Netanyahu.  I watched his speech live, where he blames one man, Netanyahu, for all the chaos, political instability, and for the inability to form a national unity government. The best part of his speech is when he says that everyone else should stop allowing Netanyahu to stand in the way — so that he, Gantz, now can be Prime Minister.  What a simple idea! I have an even better idea: How about that Gantz get out of the way so that I — or you — can be Prime Minister? 

6. News Flash: Gantz does not have 61 seats for a government, just as he did not after the prior election, just as he does not and will not in any poll for a new election.  As long as he refuses to include “the Orthodox” in his “unity” government, he cannot form a government.  Meanwhile, Likud will not dare sell out the Haredim and Bayit Yehudi and National Union — or Likud is finished, toast.  Several Likud seats are from the votes of religious nationalists who otherwise gladly would vote for Rafi Peretz (Bayit Yehudi) or Betzalel Smotrich (National Union) or Aryeh Deri (Shas) or Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism), but who vote Likud to assure a maximally large lead party for the religious-nationalist bloc. 

Indeed, observe how many of Likud’s 32 Knesset members wear kipot, are Orthodox women, or at least strongly identify with the religious status quo. By contrast, Gantz will not sit with the Orthodox, and Avigdor Liberman will not sit with him if he does. Indeed, Gantz’s own Blue-White Party will splinter, with Yair Lapid puling out his Yesh Atid faction immediately. That leaves Gantz with an impossibility: If he tries a coalition with the “Joint List” Arab Party, then Liberman will not join. If with Liberman, then he gets no Arab Party and no Meretz Leftists (whatever different name they call their party each time). Gantz cannot do it. It has nothing to do with Netanyahu — and everything to do with Yair Lapid, Liberman, the Arab Parties, and the extreme Left. Again: If Likud sells out the Orthodox, then Likud is toast. Recall — the Likud could not elect a Prime Minister through Israel’s first thirty years. The turning point was when Menachem Begin connected in 1977 with a re-oriented Sefardic traditional and Orthodox political constellation.

7. Right now, on the heels of the indictments and with the Leftist Corrupt Journalist Corps of Israel hammering it home, initial surveys show majorities saying that Netanyahu should step down.  Time heals all wounds and wounds all heels. Give it a few weeks and months until the March elections.

Even with Netanyahu embattled now, Gideon Saar is polling much worse as Likud head than is Bibi. That difference will not change dramatically. Saar may be a worthy successor to Netanyahu later, but he has demonstrated incredibly impolitic and tasteless timing, choosing to demand Likud primaries at precisely the time when the Likud should be coming together. In America, in the face of the Democrats’ bald-faced hypocrisy in conducting an Impeachment Over Nothing, the Republicans have never been tighter and more united behind President Donald Trump. That is exactly the message that Saar and Likud should be sending now: We are united, and Benny Gantz will not now nor tomorrow form a government because the Likud-Religious Bloc is solid, and the bloc’s voters are interwoven in a religious-nationalist ideology.

8. Netanyahu should not step down. Liat Ben Ari should step down. The police who blackmailed Nir Hefetz should be investigated. Mandelblit’s personal biases, and the motives for his actions, should be fair to explore publicly.

What impact did the Harpaz Affair, when it was Mandelblit who was being investigated for fraud and breach of trust, have on Mandelblit now? Remember that Mandelblit had to overcome a High Court of Justice petition against his appointment as Attorney General, arising from his role in the Harpaz Affair. There is no question that Mandelblit should have recused himself from the Netanyahu investigations because the Attorney General has had a cloud hanging over his head for more than five years, despite having been cleared in the Harpaz Affair, and he reasonably could anticipate that any unilateral acquittal of Netanyahu would have set the Corrupt Journalist Corps after him, reopening his role in the Harpaz Affair for another round of public consumption. Not only should he have recused, perhaps asking Liat Ben Ari for tips on vacation spots, but the whole sordid connection with the Harpaz Affair underscores why the system is so distorted by giving so much unilateral power to one person to take down a head of government, given the confluence of personal power issues that may plague that person’s psyche.

In summary: Netanyahu should stay where he is.  Saar should wait for a better day; his time will come if he does not ruin it now. The indictment reflects a police/justice system that has icludes aspects that are outrageously unprofessional and even corrupt. Democracies are not endangered but are empowered when public voices challenge corruption in the law-and-order system, refusing to hand over personal freedoms to the institutions of a Police State, ranging from the police to the justice system.

Too many bona fide legal scholars have set forth compelling reasons that the indictments never should have been handed down.  It is not Netanyahu but Gantz’s own internal cohort and other outside political realities that preclude Gantz from forming a government now or later, as long as he refuses to include the Orthodox and to maintain core centralities of Israel’s status quo on religious matters that include but are not limited to administration of the Kotel (Western Wall) and matters of marriage, divorce, and Judaic status. 

The Likud, for its own sake and long-term status as a dominant party, absolutely must not and cannot break its bloc with the religious, and any refusal by any other bloc to include the Orthodox in a “unity” coalition will — and should — assure future stalemate.

Israel was not created to be a Hebrew-speaking Portugal but a rebirth of a Judaic sovereign.

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischerr is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com .

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24800

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Iran Blazing - Joseph Puder

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by Joseph Puder

Protesters in Beirut, Baghdad, and Tehran recognize the problem they face.

There are ongoing demonstrations in Iran’s ‘Shiite Crescent.’ Iraq and Lebanon are ablaze with angry protesters who want change, an end to confessional politics, and corruption. These angry demonstrations have now extended to the source - the Islamic Republic of Iran itself. The Iranian people's ire is directed toward the ayatollahs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the people-harassing Basij militia. This time the demonstrators are protesting a hike in gasoline prices, but that is only an excuse for the general malaise that pervades this nation of 80 million people. The Bazaris, the mainstay of the Iranian economy, are feeling the impact of U.S. sanctions, and are resentful of the corruption around the ruling elite. The Iranian regime decision to triple gasoline prices, despite earlier promises by President Hassan Rouhani, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, igniting cross-sectarian protests that have outdone any that have gone on before. The hike makes it clear that U.S. sanctions have exhausted the regime’s coffers, prompting it to seek to generate revenues from its own people.

The free world must not ignore the current protests, especially the U.S. In 2009, when the Green Movement in Iran emerged, millions of young Iranians were frustrated by the regime subverting the elections by giving a second presidential term to the unpopular Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At that time, two years before the “Arab Spring” uprisings occurred, the Obama administration ignored the protesters who carried signs saying “Obama, are you with us or with them” meaning the Ayatollah regime. Yet, the same U.S. administration gave quiet support to the Arab revolutionaries. 

The Iranian regime has cut off the entire nation from access to the internet. To tamp down the protests, it has imprisoned journalists and other leading protesters. The U.S. must support the protesters seeking freedom from the oppressive regime. It must be done however covertly, to deny the mullahs the excuse that the protesters are “instigated by the U.S.” It is the role of the human rights organization to voice their indignation. This does not mean putting Israel on the spot by Human Rights Watch for expelling a leading BDS instigator, whose naked hostility to Israel was clearly transparent. It means admonishing and condemning the Iranian regime for its brutality and abuse of its own people. Amnesty International website carried a headline (November 25, 2019) on its website that read, “Iran: World must strongly condemn use of lethal force against protesters as the death toll rises to 143.” Amnesty International pointed out that, “According to credible reports received by the organization, at least 143 people were killed. The deaths have resulted almost entirely from the use of firearms. One man was reported to have died after inhaling tear gas, another after being beaten. Amnesty International believes that the death toll is significantly higher and is continuing to investigate.” Phillip Luther of Amnesty International said, “The international community’s cautious and muted response to the unlawful killing of protesters is woefully inadequate. They must condemn these killings in the strongest possible terms and describe these events for what they are – the deadly and wholly unwarranted use of force to crush dissent,”

The government’s refusal to abandon gas price increases and the brutal use of violence to crush the protests must have been approved by the ayatollah. The regime is expecting to raise additional revenue from the price hikes. Officials have attempted to spin the protests, suggesting that the hike was in the public’s interest. But it has also ordered internet services to be cut, with senior figures, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issuing statements claiming the protests had ended in order to persuade protesters to return home. As expected, Iranian officials have accused protesters of being paid stooges and agents of enemy states, particularly the U.S. and Israel, claiming that their objective was to create instability and regime change.

The economic hardship experienced by the average Iranian is apparently an opportunity for the regime hardliners to put the burden on President Rouhani and try to gradually sideline the so-called moderate camp in the Iranian political landscape. The hardliners accuse Rouhani of mismanaging the implementation of the recent increase in gasoline prices, which resulted in public anger. As a result, Rouhani’s main focus in his remaining time in office will likely shift to domestic challenges, with less time to follow up on his recent regional diplomatic initiatives, such as the Hormuz Peace Endeavor (an Iranian proposal to establish a regional dialogue forum much like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Rouhani raised the initiative in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September as a basis for solving the problems between Iran and its Arab neighbors. Meanwhile, Iran’s Arab rivals, especially Saudi Arabia, may now have even less incentive to enter into a meaningful dialogue with a weakened Rouhani.

The protests in Iran and those in Iraq and Lebanon, are further evidence of widespread anger at Iranian policies, highlighted by recently leaked documents published by The New York Times, showing the scale of Tehran’s meddling in Baghdad’s affairs. The fact that the protests in Lebanon have even reached the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s loyalist heartlands, shows the total rejection of the fundamentalist sectarian ideology that emerged in 1979 with the Khomeinist regime.

The New York Times reported (November 19, 2019) “in one of the leaked Iranian intelligence cables, Mr. Mahdi, who in exile worked closely with Iran while Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, had a ‘special relationship with the I.R.I.’ — the Islamic Republic of Iran — when he was Iraq’s oil minister in 2014. The exact nature of that relationship is not detailed in the cable, and, as one former senior U.S. official cautioned, a special relationship could mean a lot of things — it doesn’t mean he is an agent of the Iranian government. But no Iraqi politician can become prime minister without Iran’s blessing, and Mr. Mahdi, when he secured the premiership in 2018, was seen as a compromise candidate acceptable to both Iran and the United States. The leaked cables offer an extraordinary glimpse inside the secretive Iranian regime. They also detail the extent to which Iraq has fallen under Iranian influence since the American invasion in 2003, which transformed Iraq into a gateway for Iranian power, connecting the Islamic Republic’s geography of dominance from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.”

Forty years of rule by the Ayatollahs in Iran, has left the proud Iranian people with little more than repression, fundamentalism, sectarian hate, corruption, and mismanagement. The Iranian people seek dignity through quality education and jobs, and not by sponsoring worldwide terror and the quest for nuclear weapons. They want to be part of the civilized world, not partners with the murderous Assad regime, Hezbollah, and Russia (we might rightfully add Turkey’s President Erdogan in this connection). The apocalyptic ayatollah regime has little to show for itself other than exporting extremism, arms, and Shiite militias who spread violence and bloodshed. This is a regime that young educated Iranians want to get rid of.   The protesters in Beirut, Baghdad, and Tehran have recognized the problem they are facing, and it is the Iranian regime.

Joseph Puder

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/irans-protests-and-consequences-joseph-puder/

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Iran on the Brink - Amil Imani

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by Amil Imani

The vultures come home to roost for the Iranian mullahs.

Uprisings in Iran have become routine occurrences, albeit without much success. Why? Because Iran is ruled by a totalitarian Islamic ideology like Nazism and communism. In Iran, there is no sovereignty of the people. Instead, there is a perception of the Ummah in Shia theology “rule of Mahdi”, guardianship over the people. In other words, Iran belongs to “Imam Zaman” (the Hidden Imam) and in his absence, a supreme leader is in charge. In this case, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Any revolt against the State is considered a direct attack against the upcoming “Lord of the Age.”

Hence, at the slightest signs of protests, the regime unleashes its wild dogs (soldiers of Mahdi) on a killing spree. Iranians partook in many protests across the country amidst a failing economic situation, systematic government corruption, and widespread frustration over the lack of political and social freedoms. As always, the regime’s security apparatus reacted to these protests with mass arrests and severe due process abuses. Pundits and experts believe “Khamenei’s tough response could just invite more anger.”

Since the Islamic invasion of 1979, the Mullahs have ruled over the unarmed Iranian people with an iron fist and absolute power while draining the nation’s treasury. As a result, millions of Iranians had no choice but to flee their homes to the four corners of the globe. In these recent protests, Iran’s rulers once again revealed their real identity to the world that they don’t value human life. They are simply vicious killers.

U.S. Sanctions

After the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal) on May 18, 2018, the US almost immediately imposed several new sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI).

The U.S. followed up with further sanctions on the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his office, and those who were closely tied to him with access to major financial resources. In July 2019, the United States placed sanctions on the regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad, Javad Zarif.

The U.S. also placed sanctions on eight senior commanders of the navy, aerospace, and ground forces components of the IRGC. In April of 2019, President Donald Trump designated Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a foreign "terrorist” organization.

Results

Within a few months, Iran’s crude oil exports were slashed by almost 80%. Despite massive propaganda from President Rouhani’s office claiming these sanctions did not phase them and they had gotten used to them. However, this dosage of reality hit the regime hard. The regime is out of money and unable to pay the salaries of their military apparatus as well as its terrorist proxies such as Hezb’allah, Hamas, the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, Bashar al-Assad of Syria and other hired thugs. By November 2019, the regime was completely broke and needed to come up with a solution to save itself.

Out of desperation, the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei took a gamble and raised the price of gasoline by 50% (some say by 300%) in order to consolidate the budget deficit. That was precisely what prompted protests in at least five cities almost simultaneously and brought millions of people into the streets. Almost all the slogans were against the Ayatollah Khamenei himself.

Death Toll

On November 15, 2019, over 100 protesters were killed and over a 1000 arrested in just one day. The exact total of casualties since the protests began are unknown, but unofficial reports from inside Iran indicate that around 1000 people died and close to 10,000 were injured or arrested. Out of fear, the regime immediately cut off all communications, including the internet, to the outside world. They feared of the watchful eyes of the people around the world witnessing yet again the mullahs’ atrocities against the Iranian people, who are barely surviving in a country that spends 80% of its oil revenue on terrorism worldwide.

Business as Usual

Without any question, the civilized world is aware that the Islamic Republic is immensely despised by its people. Yet they ignore this and continue doing business as usual. Political analysts and pundits know that neither the mullahs nor the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) are going away peacefully. They have no intention of handing over the country to the people anytime soon. Why? Three reasons. First, Iran is a rich country and the mullahs are naturally greedy thieves. They cannot be reconciled with allowing it to slip away. Second, they know that Shia Islam would most likely cease to exist. Third, they are mortally afraid that if they let Iran become free, the Iranian people would take their revenge without any mercy upon them. After all, for the past forty years they have committed every crime and atrocity known to man against the Iranian people. The late Ayatollah Khomeini warned them about this before his death.

Now What?

The regime is aware that it can neither go back nor forward. It is stuck between a rock and hard place. The only reason they are still in power is because there are greedy and money hungry politicians who will do anything for cheap oil and bribery. I remember the Ayatollah Khamenei’s words on his Friday sermons during the Green Revolution in 2009. He directly ordered his Bassij, plainclothes thugs and IRGC forces to shoot and kill indiscriminately anyone who challenged his Ummah (community of Shia Islam). 

In another speech, he openly stated that he had learned a valuable lesson from the late Shah of Iran. He said, “He would never relinquish power as easily as the Shah did.” In 1978, I was still in Iran and I know the Shah never personally ordered soldiers to kill people at point-blank range. In fact, he never ordered anyone to be killed.

The Shah was a very kind and sensitive man, despite all the allegations the leftist media have conjured up about him. That is precisely why he departed his beloved country rather than remain and face a bloodbath. 

Forty Years of Islamic Terror

For the past forty-years, thousands of dissidents, students, intellectuals, and journalists have been systematically arrested, imprisoned and tortured for the sole crime of speaking up against the oppressive rule of the mullahs. Many are still languishing in prisons, some have died, and some have simply vanished with no trace. Not only has the regime terrorized its own people, they have also demonstrated a high priority for supporting global terrorism.

Many Iranians are following the events in Iran carefully. Despite an unprecedented internet shutdown by the regime, the Iranian people have succeeded in providing the world with video evidence of the Mullahs’ brutality. “We see you, we hear you, & as Secretary of State Michael Pompeo stated, the U.S. is with you.”

The legitimacy of the Islamic Republic is now under serious question. The protests that began two weeks ago in Iran are different from most previous protests. These protesters have covered more area, overwhelming small and midsize cities across the country. They also have reportedly drawn more than 16 million participants in over 100 cities, much more than did the 2009 Green Revolution protests in Tehran.

Are we finally witnessing the end of the Islamic Republic? Yes, but not immediately. It is only a matter of time -- and not a very long one either.

Amil Imani

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/iran_on_the_brink.html

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As the west goes terribly wrong, Arabs inch in the right direction - Melanie Phillips

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by Melanie Phillips

Prominent figures from 15 Arab countries met in London last week to reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — whose aim is to destroy Israel — and encourage the establishment of relations with Israel instead.

As the west goes in one direction, so the Arab world is now going in the other.

While British and western “progressive” circles descend ever deeper into the sewers of antisemitism and its contemporary mutation, the campaign to exterminate the State of Israel, the Arab world is beginning to renounce its own desire to wipe Israel off the map.

Prominent figures from 15 Arab countries met in London last week to reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — whose aim is to destroy Israel — and encourage the establishment of relations with Israel instead.

The Clarion Project reports that participants were drawn from Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf states and included journalists, artists, politicians, diplomats, Quranic scholars, women and young people. The meeting was publicised only after its participants returned to their native countries. The New York Times was allowed to post a live stream of the meeting (held in Arabic) after the event.

“The Times reported that the group in London agreed that ‘BDS] has only helped [Israel] while damaging Arab nations that have long shunned the Jewish state. Demonizing Israel has cost Arab nations billions in trade.’ Mustafa el-Dessouki, an Egyptian who is the managing editor of the prominent news magazine Majalla  (which is funded by Saudi Arabia), was one of the main organizers of the meeting.

“In recent travels around the Middle East, Dessouki said met many Arabs with similar views to his, including citizens of Lebanon. This was in spite of the fact that the Arab news media and entertainment industry have long been ‘programming people toward this hostility’ against Israel and Jews, he said, while politicians were ‘intimidating and scaring people into manifesting it.’”

Meanwhile, also last week the Israeli foreign ministry brought to Israel a group of journalists from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Egypt.

“Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one of the journalists, who was described as a prominent figure in Saudi Arabia, said: ‘There is no escape from establishing normal relations with Israel.’ By ‘normal relations’ he said he meant ‘real peace,’ not the peace that is currently seen between the Egyptian and Jordanian governments with Israel, which he criticized for fomenting hate against Israel. In regards to the Palestinian issue, the Saudi said, ‘Why should the Arab world ignite problems with Israel and the super-powers because of a small minority? This minority had a chance to form a state in ’47 but refused because it only dealt with the question, “Why do the Jews have an independent country?””

“When asked about his experience touring Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, he said, “‘When people heard I am from Saudi Arabia, they were amazed. Not in a hostile manner, but by accepting who I was. I love the Jewish people and all the citizens of Israel,’ he concluded in Hebrew.”

Wow. In a repressive state like Saudi Arabia, people do not speak out like this unless they know they have the tacit approval of the regime. And there have been others. In the summer a Saudi blogger, Mohammed Saud, was violently attacked by Palestinians when he made a high-profile visit to Israel. They spat at him and cursed him as an “animal” and a “Zionist”, and one threw a plastic chair at him. But he still spoke out about what he had found.

“Visiting Israel, he said, was like ‘being in heaven’. ‘For those people who hate Israel,’ he concluded, ‘I would like you to think deeply, and I invite you to come and visit Israel. You will find a different experience. You will find that most of the propaganda and the bad media about Israel is not true.’’’

Earlier in the year, after Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets at southern Israel over a two-day span resulting in Israeli air-strikes and the assassination of a top Hamas commander, several prominent Saudi journalists and intellectuals expressed support for Israel and blamed Iran for the outbreak in hostilities.

One of them, the former director of the Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Hakim, wrote to the Israelis: “Our hearts are with you. May Allah protect Israel and its people. We will not let the treacherous hand of Iran and its agents in Gaza reach the Israeli people,” he added.

Wow and wow again. Seasoned western observers of the Arab world, however, sniff that this is all merely tactical positioning, led by Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to gain the support of both Israel and the US in Saudi Arabia’s battle against Iran and is of no lasting significance.

Maybe. We’ll know for certain that something really momentous is happening if and when these Arab states stop pumping out their eye-watering Jewish conspiracy theories and deranged medieval blood libels about Jews using the blood of gentile children in baking their Passover matzos – the kind of murderous lies that are now being circulated as fact in degraded, de-moralised and decadent Britain (to the astonishment and horror of its many decent citizens, who are only now beginning to realise the nature and extent of the poison that is coursing through their country).

It’s obviously advisable to be cautious. A few reforming voices in the Arab world don’t necessarily mean a cultural revolution is under way. But it could just be that something quite revolutionary is now developing which hitherto would have been thought utterly impossible — an acceptance by the Arab world of the tiny, ancient homeland of the Jewish people alongside the vast lands of Islam.

History shows that societies which respect the Jews prosper; societies that despise them set the seal on their own destruction. It’s a lesson that the Arab world may slowly be beginning to learn – while the west slides towards a cultural precipice that few within it even realise is there.


Melanie Phillips

Source: https://www.melaniephillips.com/arabs-inch-right-direction-west-goes-terribly-wrong/

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Burgess Owens on the Candace Owens Show - Prager University

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by Prager University

Rejecting leftist shackles -- and shattering glass ceilings.

In this new video, NFL Super Bowl champion Burgess Owens shares his experience growing up in the Deep South, overcoming racism, and shattering glass ceilings — becoming the third black American to earn a football scholarship at the University of Miami and landing a career in professional sports. Don’t miss it!





Prager University

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/prager-u-video-burgess-owens-candace-owens-show-prager-university/

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