Video: 'Color, Communism and Common Sense' - Frontpage Editors

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by Frontpage Editors

How a 60-year-old book exposed the Marxist plan to incite a race war.

Filmed in 1969, this short video will shock you with its relevance to current events. The narrator references a book by ex-Communist Party member Manning Johnson, a black man, titled Color, Communism and Common Sense, which -- despite being written in 1958 -- effectively exposes what the far left is attempting to put into practice today. Check out the short but fascinating video below (and ignore the outdated terminology). Don't miss it!




Frontpage Editors

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-color-communism-and-common-sense-frontpage-editors/

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Joe Biden’s ‘conspiracy theory’ memo to U.S. media doesn’t match the facts - John Solomon

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by John Solomon

Look at the facts.

Former vice president Joe Biden’s extraordinary campaign memo this week imploring U.S. news media to reject the allegations surrounding his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company makes several bold declarations.

The memo by Biden campaign aides Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken specifically warned reporters covering the impeachment trial they would be acting as “enablers of misinformation” if they repeated allegations that the former vice president forced the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden worked as a highly compensated board member.

Biden’s memo argues there is no evidence that the former vice president’s or Hunter Biden’s conduct raised any concern, and that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation was “dormant” when the vice president forced the prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine. 

The memo calls the allegation a “conspiracy theory”  (and, in full disclosure, blames my reporting for the allegations surfacing last year.)

But the memo omits critical impeachment testimony and other evidence that paint a far different portrait than Biden’s there’s-nothing-to-talk-about-here rebuttal.

Here are the facts, with links to public evidence, so you can decide for yourself.

Fact: Joe Biden admitted to forcing Shokin’s firing in March 2016.

It is irrefutable, and not a conspiracy theory, that Joe Biden bragged in this 2018 speech to a foreign policy group that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev if then-Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko didn’t immediately fire Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden told the 2018 audience in recounting what he told Poroshenko

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event.

Fact: Shokin’s prosecutors were actively investigating Burisma when he was fired. 

While some news organizations cited by the Biden memo have reported the investigation was “dormant” in March 2016, official files released by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, in fact, show there was substantial investigative activity in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing.

The corruption investigations into Burisma and its founder began in 2014. Around the same time, Hunter Biden and his U.S. business partner Devon Archer were added to Burisma’s board, and their Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm began receiving regular $166,666 monthly payments, which totaled nearly $2 million a year. Both banks records seized by the FBI in America and Burisma’s own ledgers in Ukraine confirm these payments. 

To put the payments in perspective, the annual amounts paid by Burisma to Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm were 30 times the average median annual household income for everyday Americans.

For a period of time in 2015, those investigations were stalled as Ukraine was creating a new FBI-like law enforcement agency known as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau ((NABU) to investigate endemic corruption in the former Soviet republic. 

There was friction between NABU and the prosecutor general’s office for a while. And then in September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt demanded more action in the Burisma investigation. You can read his speech here. Activity ramped up extensively soon after.

In December 2015, the prosecutor’s files show, Shokin’s office transferred the evidence it had gathered against Burisma to NABU for investigation. 

In early February 2016, Shokin’s office secured a court order allowing prosecutors to re-seize some of the Burisma founder’s property, including his home and luxury car, as part of the ongoing probe.

Two weeks later, in mid-February 2016, Latvian law enforcement sent this alert to Ukrainian prosecutors flagging several payments from Burisma to American accounts as “suspicious.” The payments included some monies to Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s firm. Latvian authorities recently confirmed it sent the alert.

Shokin told both me and ABC News that just before he was fired under pressure from Joe Biden he also was making plans to interview Hunter Biden.

Fact: Burisma’s lawyers in 2016 were pressing U.S. and Ukrainian authorities to end the corruption investigations.

Burisma’s main U.S. lawyer John Buretta acknowledged in this February 2017 interview with a Ukraine newspaper that the company remained under investigation in 2016, until he negotiated for one case to be dismissed and the other to be settled by payment of a large tax penalty.

Documents released under an open records lawsuit show Burisma legal team was pressuring the State Department in February 2016 to end the corruption allegations against the gas firm and specifically invoked Hunter Biden’s name as part of the campaign. You can read those documents here.

In addition, immediately after Joe Biden succeeded in getting Shokin ousted, Burisma’s lawyers sought to meet with his successor as chief prosecutor to settle the case. Here is the Ukrainian prosecutors’ summary memo of one of their meetings with the firm’s lawyers.

Fact: There is substantial evidence Joe Biden and his office knew about the Burisma probe and his son’s role as a board member.

The New York Times reported in this December 2015 article that the Burisma investigation was ongoing and Hunter Biden’s role in the company was undercutting Joe Biden’s push to fight Ukrainian corruption. The article quoted the vice president’s office.

In addition, Hunter Biden acknowledged in this interview he had discussed his Burisma job with his father on one occasion and that his father responded by saying he hoped the younger Biden knew what he was doing.

And when America’s new ambassador to Ukraine was being confirmed in 2016 before the Senate she was specifically advised to refer questions about Hunter Biden, Burisma and the probe to Joe Biden’s VP office, according to these State Department documents.

Fact: Federal Ethics rules requires government officials to avoid taking policy actions affecting close relatives.

Office of Government Ethics rules require all government officials to recuse themselves from any policy actions that could impact a close relative or cause a reasonable person to see the appearance of a conflict of interest or question their impartiality.

“The impartiality rule requires an employee to consider appearance concerns before participating in a particular matter if someone close to the employee is involved as a party to the matter,” these rules state. “This requirement to refrain from participating (or recuse) is designed to avoid the appearance of favoritism in government decision-making.”

Fact: Multiple State Department officials testified the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In House impeachment testimony, Obama-era State Department officials declared the juxtaposition of Joe Biden overseeing Ukraine policy, including the anti-corruption efforts, at the same his son Hunter worked for a Ukraine gas firm under corruption investigation created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In fact, deputy assistant secretary George Kent said he was so concerned by Burisma’s corrupt reputation that he blocked a project the State Department had with Burisma and tried to warn Joe Biden’s office about the concerns about an apparent conflict of interest.

Likewise, the House Democrats’ star impeachment witness, former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, agreed the Bidens’ role in Ukraine created an ethic issue. “I think that it could raise the appearance of a conflict of interest,” she testified. You can read her testimony here.

Fact: Hunter Biden acknowleged he may have gotten his Burisma job solely because of his last name.

In this interview last summer, Hunter Biden said it might have been a “mistake” to serve on the Burisma board and that it was possible he was hired simply because of his proximity to the vice president.

“If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?,” a reporter asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” Hunter Biden answered. “But that’s — you know — I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

Fact: Ukraine law enforcement reopened the Burisma investigation in early 2019, well before President Trump mentioned the matter to Ukraine’s new president Vlodymyr Zelensky.

This may be the single biggest under-reported fact in the impeachment scandal: four months before Trump and Zelensky had their infamous phone call, Ukraine law enforcement officials officially reopened their investigation into Burisma and its founder.

The effort began independent of Trump or his lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s legal work. In fact, it was NABU – the very agency Joe Biden and the Obama administration helped start – that recommended in February 2019 to reopen the probe.

NABU director Artem Sytnyk made this announcement that he was recommending a new notice of suspicion be opened to launch the case against Burisma and its founder because of new evidence uncovered by detectives.

Ukrainian officials said that new evidence included records suggesting a possible money laundering scheme dating to 2010 and continuing until 2015.

A month later in March 2019, Deputy Prosecutor General Konstantin Kulyk officially filed this notice of suspicion re-opening the case.

And Reuters recently quoted Ukrainian officials as saying the ongoing probe was expanded to allegations of theft of public funds.

The implications of this timetable are significant to the Trump impeachment trial because the president couldn’t have pressured Ukraine to re-open the investigation in July 2019 when Kiev had already done so on its own, months earlier.

For a complete timeline of all the key events in the Ukraine scandal, you can click here.


John Solomon

Source: https://johnsolomonreports.com/joe-bidens-conspiracy-theory-memo-to-u-s-media-doesnt-match-the-facts/

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Critical Race Theory Indoctrination in Our Schools - Joseph Klein

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by Joseph Klein

Progressive re-education arrives at Virginia schools.

There is certainly nothing wrong with reviewing the current educational curricula of primary and secondary schools to ensure a comprehensive and accurate presentation of African American history. However, this should not mean turning the imperfect but continuing progress of America throughout its history to achieve its founding ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness into some sort of fictional dystopia. Yet anti-American critical race theory indoctrination of impressionable students is spreading from college campuses to elementary and secondary schools. Critical race theory posits that America’s institutions are rotten to the core because of their supposedly systemic racist foundations.

The Virginia Board of Education is meeting this week to discuss the recommendations set forth in a report commissioned by Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam of blackface fame. The report recommends revamping Virginia’s school curriculum, all the way down to elementary school, to incorporate a narrative of white oppression of African Americans as well as of American Indians. It is entitled “Final Report of the Virginia Commission on African American History Education in the Commonwealth."

The Commission used as one of its resources the avowedly anti-white book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism written by Robin DiAngelo, who believes that racism is “embedded in the foundation of U.S. society.” She has attacked the “current structures of capitalism and domination” and what she has called “unearned white privilege.”

Another resource the Virginia Commission used was How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi believes that “Capitalism is essentially racist” and “racism is essentially capitalist.” He has proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “fix the original sin of racism.” It “would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with ‘racist ideas’ and ‘public official’ clearly defined).” It would also “establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism.”

Yet another resource used by the Virginia commission was Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversation About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools. Singleton is a strong advocate of critical race theory who wants his Pacific Educational Group’s program of instruction to raise classroom teachers' awareness of the “ubiquity of white privilege and racism.”

In addition, the Virginia Commission on African American History Education named DiAngelo, Kendi and Singleton as three of its “scholars and partners for collaboration.”

The Commission also partnered with the historically challenged 1619 Project, which views slavery as the animating force behind all of America’s history up to the present day.  As the editor of the New York Times Magazine, Jake Silverstein, explained, “The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.”

With inputs from these sorts of social justice warriors who believe the United States is an inherently racist country, the Commission Report, in Bacon's Rebellion writer James Sherlock’s words, is “critical race theory brought to life."

The Commission Report’s executive summary claims that Virginia’s standards for content in Virginia schools are “tainted with a master narrative that marginalized or erased the presence of non-Europeans from the American landscape.”

In the section of the Commission Report describing its vision, the authors wrote: “The Commission embraced culturally responsive pedagogy because it recognizes the importance of students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning and does not just reinforce the values of the dominant culture.”

The Commission Report views American history primarily through the lens of “systemic racism,” which it implicitly links with “imperialism,” “colonialism,” and the “economic motivation” behind capitalism.

The Commission Report recommends that African American history be taught in all classrooms 180 days a year – identity politics at its finest. Starting in Grade One, the Commission Report urges adding only Juneteenth to the existing list of three officially recognized holidays – Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, and Independence Day.

The only other minority group’s history that the Commission Report recommends be revised involves “indigenous” native Americans. Starting in Grade One, for example, the Commission wants the reference to Pocahontas in the current curriculum omitted. Instead, the Commission recommends that first grade students learn “how the relationship between diseases and weapons of the English settlers impacted the Virginia Indians.”

The Commission Report recommendations for changes to Virginia school course content in the higher grades get progressively worse.

For a course entitled “United States History to 1865,” the Commission Report recommends adding the following to the section on the Constitutional Convention: “The Three-fifths Compromise perpetuated slavery in the United States.” The report fails to balance this statement with one pointing out that the Constitution set a deadline for ending the importation of new slaves into the United States.

The authors of the Commission Report want to portray the founding fathers as bad white men using the Constitution to perpetuate slavery and little else. The truth is that without a compromise there would have been no United States in the first place and the South could have formed its own independent country with slavery remaining intact far longer than it did. The founding fathers were able to incorporate in the Constitution the deadline for ending slave trade into the United States. They also included an amendment process that would prove crucial over time in abolishing slavery and enacting other critical protections for African Americans and other minority groups.

Some of the Commission Report edits give the impression that slavery was a Western European/American invention rather than acknowledging that slavery had already existed legally within Africa itself for many years prior to its introduction to the Virginia colonies. Some Africans treated other Africans as their property for use in enslaved labor or as chattel for sale. Many of the Africans who were transported to the Americas were originally enslaved by Africans in Africa. It is misleading for the Commission Report to claim that for nearly two thousand years enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies via the Middle Passage, or to leave out the enslaved condition of some Africans in Africa before they were brought to America.

The Commission Report recommends adding to a course entitled “United States History: 1865 to the Present” a project that would involve creating “a timeline that illustrates the role of Jim Crow (segregation) laws in the 20th century and how those laws restricted the rights, economic decision-making, and choices of African Americans.”  OK, but shouldn’t such a timeline also include the dates that Jim Crow laws were eliminated by court orders and by federal civil rights legislation guaranteeing the right to vote and non-discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment?

The Commission also recommends revising Virginia’s Teacher Evaluation Regulations and Virginia’s Uniform Performance standards for School Leaders “to include cultural proficiency efficacy.” One can only imagine the critical race theory brainwashing that will be included in the Cultural Competency Professional Development and African American history programs that Virginia educators will be required to enroll in if the Commission gets its way.

Virginia is far from alone in embracing historical revisionism to placate the social justice crowd.  The 1619 Project is infiltrating our schools despite its significant historical errors noted by real historians. According to an article published by the Education Next Institute, “Schools or school districts in Chicago; Newark, N.J.; Buffalo, N.Y., and Washington, D.C. all announced 1619 Project-related events.” The Pulitzer Center is promoting its Reading Guide to the 1619 Project for all grades around the country. It includes a lesson plan entitled Exploring "The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the principal New York Times staffer behind the 1619 Project. The lesson plan poses such loaded questions as “What examples of hypocrisy in the founding of the U.S. does Hannah-Jones supply? What evidence can you see for how ‘some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy’?”

We are also seeing critical race theory seeping into religious school curriculums. For example, a Minnesota reform synagogue’s religious school program for grades 3-5 recommends that the children read and be prepared to discuss a book entitled One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia in order to “explore the topic of Racism in America through an age-appropriate novel.”

Far from promoting racial harmony, this book idealizes the violent Black Panther Party of the 1960’s and glorifies a mother who abandoned her children to work for the cause of black power. Not surprisingly, the New York Times gave One Crazy Summer a good review.

The book is about three young sisters in the 1960's who head out to Oakland to stay with their runaway mother after four years. The mother decided to send the girls to a nearby Black Panther Party summer camp. The book conveniently leaves out the truth about the 1960’s version of the Black Panthers – a black Maoist revolutionary group whose members killed and wounded a number of police officers and committed other crimes. Instead, the novel uses the group’s name but turns its members at the camp into a fictional bunch of caring, lovable individuals. For good measure, the girls’ mother, who has no interest in taking care of her kids, is arrested by the police for writing poems about black power. Children are taught at an early age – in a religious school no less – that police are racist villains.

Any teacher who uses anti-American leftist propaganda of the kind described in this article in his or her classroom is guilty of educator malpractice.

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/critical-race-theory-indoctrination-our-schools-joseph-klein/

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Mueller Team Disinfects Phone Evidence En Masse - Deborah Weiss

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by Deborah Weiss

While the Establishment Media stays dutifully silent.

(Almost) Breaking News: Recently disclosed DOJ documents reveal that members of the Mueller team wiped their phones clean of any and all data prior to submitting them to the IG for his investigation. In total, there were 31 phones that were wiped clean (27 phones plus mobile phones that had been reassigned).

None of these phones were set to have their data backed up, so it is believed that the information cannot be recovered from a cloud or a backup server.

ALL of the people whose phones were wiped clean claimed to have had their phones wiped "by accident."

Yes, ALL of the people whose phones were wiped clean just “coincidentally” wiped them clean after they learned that the IG was going to conduct an investigation into the roots of “Crossfire Hurricane” (the counterintelligence investigation of the alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia). But they also wiped their phones clean before their phones were turned in to the Inspector General.

Additionally, ALL of the phones that were wiped clean were wiped clean by the same methods: most entered the wrong password into their phones ten times. These were iPhones, which do not allow you to enter wrong passwords ten times in one sitting. You can do it a few times, and after that, you get locked out for a period of time (i.e. 45 minutes, then an hour the next time, etc.)  In the interim, you get warning notifications that someone is trying to enter the wrong passcode into your phone in case it is being hacked. You always have the option of contacting your IT guy for help, but oddly, not one of the individuals in this narrative did so.

Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok also had no information on their phones by the time their phones got to the IG’s office. Lisa Page’s phone was somehow lost by the Special Counsel’s Office. Though it was eventually found, by the time it was received by the IG’s office, it had been reset to “factory settings” with no information on it.

Peter Strzok turned in his phone to the Special Counsel’s Records Officer, who reported that there were “no substantive texts, notes or reminders” on the phone. The Special Records Officer claimed that she “can’t remember if there were no texts on the device or if they were just innocuous,” but she thinks it was the latter. Strzok’s phone was also reset to factory settings before it was submitted to the IG.

Even the higher-ups on the Mueller team "accidentally" wiped their phones clean. This includes the slimy prosecutor Andrew Weissman, who was Mueller’s deputy, known for his aggressive prosecutions, lack of integrity, and partisanship, as well as other top prosecutors on the case who were involved with actions like indicting Trump associates for process crimes. According to the Special Counsel’s Office records, the phone of James Quarles, Assistant Special Assistant Counsel, “wiped itself clean” without any help from him. Additionally, it appears that Andrew Weissman and some of the other top prosecutors put their phones on airplane mode prior to entering the wrong passwords ten times, so that the data would not be backed up in a cloud or elsewhere automatically. Weissman had two cell phones wiped clean with incorrect passwords.

Some coincidence, huh? No Russian collusion, Mueller team prosecutions for process crimes that would never have occurred but for the investigation, and now those same prosecutors and other members of the Mueller team "accidentally" deleted the information on their phones during the same time period using the same methods. The phones still work. They aren't broken. They just have no data.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is demanding answers. He is requesting that DOJ provide the committee with all records pertaining to the cell phones, the deletion of data, and attempts to recover it. He also sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr inquiring whether DOJ is going to investigate potential violations of the law, due to the fact that it seems incredulous that the mass phone wiping was accidental. Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, a government watch-dog organization which obtained the federal records through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is calling for a criminal investigation into what he refers to as the “pandemic of wiped phones.” The focus will be on the state of mind of those who wiped their phones clean, to determine whether they did so intentionally in violation of the law.

In my view, the Mueller team members who wiped their phones clean of data belong in jail. I don't say these things hastily or take these matters lightly. I give people every benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. But it is clear that it is statistically not feasible to have this all be "an accident" as claimed. This was obviously intentional.

It’s important to understand that even if evidence was destroyed pertaining to the illicit origins of the “Russian collusion” investigation, the mere destruction of the evidence constitutes a potential crime. Arguably, Mueller team members violated the federal records act by destroying federal records. They have destroyed evidence in the course of an investigation, and they have obstructed justice. The people they indicted during the course of their hefty taxpayer-funded witch hunt, went to jail for lesser crimes than these. They should be called in front of a grand jury and if they lie, then perjury charges should be slapped on them as well.

Often, people complain that nobody on the "other side" ever goes to jail or they ask, "Why aren't people prosecuted?" My answer is that it’s usually because the wheels of justice turn slowly. In this case, I have to admit, I am getting fed up. Time will tell if Attorney General Bill Barr has the gumption to do the right thing, even when it will be politically unpopular and he will be accused of being "Trump's personal attorney."

Now, why do I say this is "almost breaking news?" This information broke last Friday in a press release issued by Judicial Watch. As a survivor of the terrorist attacks in New York City, I understand quite well that Friday was September 11^th. However, did you hear anything about this on the Sunday shows? Of course not. Real crimes ostensibly committed by partisan hacks trying to steal an election do not make the news these days. Instead, Chuck Todd and his pals were too busy pontificating about the admittedly fake news of Bob Woodward's accusations against Trump, which Woodward now admits "might not have been correct." Yet, the accusations were treated as though they were both accurate and important, when they were neither.

All of this raises the question of why Chuck Todd’s show, which has only one host, is referred to as "the press." Years ago, Meet the Press had a panel of press representatives. But now, the state of the media is so pathetic that if you meet Chuck Todd, you have indeed met the press.

The Mueller team’s en masse disinfecting of phones should have been breaking news headlines. Instead, the Sunday shows and much of the establishment media have failed to mention it at all. And the reason for that is, of course, obvious.


Deborah Weiss is an attorney and regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/mueller-team-disinfects-phone-evidence-en-masse-deborah-weiss/

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The Red-Green alliance's war against Israel continues - Caroline B. Glick

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by Caroline B. Glick

Members of the Islamist bloc finance and direct the terror forces in Judea and Samaria and Gaza and work in cooperation with their front groups in the West.

There are two sides to the war against Israel – the terrorist side and the political side. The missiles the Hamas' terrorist regime in Gaza shot at Ashdod and Ashkelon and the anti-Israel demonstrations outside the White House which both happened during the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn, are a bitter reminder that the war against the Jewish state is far from over.

Even if US President Donald Trump's rosiest prediction – that nine more Arab states will be normalizing their relations with Israel in the coming months – comes true, the rejectionist axis will maintain its war against Israel.

On the eve of the signing ceremony Tuesday, the Strategic Affairs Ministry published an assessment that said the opposite. According to the ministry, normalization of ties between Israel and many of its Arab neighbors will diminish the force of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. Unfortunately, the ministry's assessment ignores the nature of the forces behind the BDS campaign.

Broadly speaking there are two forces behind the BDS movements in the West. First, there are the Islamists and their Western front groups.

A decade ago, the so-called Arab Spring, which destabilized and toppled regimes in the Arab world split the Arab and Islamic world into two opposing blocs. On the one hand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt formed an anti-Islamist axis that stands opposed to the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the years, other states have joined this axis including Oman, Sudan, and Morocco.

Members of the anti-Islamist bloc turned towards Israel because they perceive the Jewish state as a powerful ally in their existential struggle with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Opposing the members of this bloc are members of the Islamist axis. Its leading members are Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Standing with them are their proxies Syria, Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas.

The civil war in Libya is a proxy war between the two axes.

The split in the Arab-Islamic world means that while members of the anti-Islamist bloc may end their Arab boycott against Israel, members of the Islamist bloc will maintain their Arab boycott against Israel.

And this brings us to the second side of the BDS movement – its Western side. Westerners involved in the BDS campaign don't care if the members of the anti-Islamist bloc end their boycott of Israel. They are happy to suffice with the continuation of the boycott by members of the Islamist axis.

This is the heart of the matter. The BDS campaign is a central component of the working alliance between the European Union, the Western left and the Islamist bloc. The Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah in Ramallah is dependent on the Western half of the Red-Green axis. Hamas is controlled by the Islamist bloc.

All members of the Red-Green axis share a deep-seated hostility towards Israel, the Trump administration and the anti-Islamist Arab bloc. Whereas for decades the Palestinians were proxies of the Arab world and their war against the Jewish state was an Arab proxy war, today the Palestinians are a proxy of the Red-Green alliance. They wage their multi-dimensional campaign against Israel with the active support and involvement of their Red-Green axis sponsors.

Whereas the Trump administration and the members of the anti-Islamist bloc ended their financial support for the PA and the Hamas regime in recent years, the EU, its member states, leftist foundations, Turkey, Qatar and Iran all increased their financial support to the two Palestinian regimes.

The Europeans and the international Left have taken a leading role in several aspects of the Palestinian war. They are the authors and primary engine behind the PA's campaign to seize lands in Area C. They run the information and diplomatic efforts against Israel at the UN and the Hague tribunals. They fuel and finance political warfare campaigns aimed at delegitimizing the IDF and Israeli society more generally and subverting Israel's legal system through their Israeli and Palestinian registered NGOs.

Members of the Islamist bloc finance and direct the terror forces in Judea and Samaria and Gaza and work in cooperation with their front groups in the West.

Tuesday, supporters of BDS who demonstrated outside the White House hailed from fifty anti-Israel groups that span the spectrum from the Marxist left, to the anti-Zionist, self-hating Jewish left, to Fatah and Hamas front groups.

The icy coverage the historic ceremony at the White House received from the liberal media in the US and from the European media made clear that the Western side of the Red-Green alliance isn't interested in Middle East peace and stability. And the fact that neither senior Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, nor representatives from any EU member nation aside from Hungary attended the ceremony underscores this reality still more. With or without Israel-Arab peace, under the Red-Green alliance, all aspects of the war against Israel will continue unabated.

Caroline B. Glick

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/09/17/the-red-green-alliances-war-against-israel-continues/

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Arabs: Israel Is Not Our Enemy - Khaled Abu Toameh

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by Khaled Abu Toameh

"Palestinian leaders are the main cause for the suffering of their people. — Emirati political analyst Issa bin Arabi Albuflasah, Al Bayan, September 12, 2020.

• "Times change, everything has changed, except for the Palestinian mood that rejects anything and everything." — Saudi writer Amal Abdel Aziz al-Hazany, Asharq al-Awsat, September 15, 2020.
• "Palestinian leaders are the main cause for the suffering of their people. They have achieved nothing for the Palestinians. They only care about power and achieving personal and partisan gains at the expense of the Palestinian issue." — Emirati political analyst Issa bin Arabi Albuflasah, Al Bayan, September 12, 2020.
• "We were told that Israel's slogan was [to expand] 'From the Euphrates to the Nile.' Iran, however, does not hide its expansionist ideological trend, which it is already practicing through its militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Turkey, on the other hand, is seeking to seize new sources of energy in Libya and has sights on Africa along the Red Sea. These developments prompted the moderate Arabs to start reconsidering previous their political positions." — Saudi writer Fahd al Degaither, Okaz, September 14, 2020.
• "The Palestinian issue concerns the Arab peoples who want a solution, but the leaders benefit from the status quo. These leaders benefit from the problems and suffering of their people. There is no solution under corrupt leaderships." — Saudi writer Osama Yamani, Okaz, September 11, 2020.
• Al-Shkiran also advised the Palestinians to hold their leaders accountable on two levels: "The first is political accountability: The reasons and causes of the continued rejection of all realistic deals that were offered to them since the beginning of the problem until today. Second: Opening the files of corruption. The Palestinian has the right to ask about the billions of dollars paid by the Gulf states for the Palestinian cause. All that money has disappeared." — Saudi writer and researcher Fahd al-Shkiran, Asharq Al-Awsat, September 16, 2020.

A growing number of Arabs, particularly those living in the Gulf, say they finally understand that Israel is not the enemy of the Muslims and Arabs. This change of heart manifested even before the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed peace agreements with Israel during a ceremony at the White House on September 15. Pictured from left to right: UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump at the White House on September 15, 2020. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

A growing number of Arabs, particularly those living in the Gulf, say they finally understand that Israel is not the enemy of the Muslims and Arabs. This change of heart manifested even before the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed peace agreements with Israel during a ceremony at the White House on September 15. It is the direct result of the expansionist ambitions of Iran and Turkey in the Arab world and the feeling among Arabs that those two states pose the real threat to their national security.

Until recently, it was unimaginable to see Arabs openly admitting that they had been mistaken in their belief that Israel was the enemy of the Muslims and Arabs. Now, Arabs seem to have no problem saying that they were wrong all these years about their attitude toward Israel. These Arabs now are saying out loud that Iran and its proxies in the Arab world, and not Israel, are the real enemies of Arabs and Muslims.

Until recently, most Arab writers, journalists and political activists avoided any form of criticism of the Palestinians. Such criticism was considered taboo in the Arab world: the Palestinians were considered the poor spoiled babies who were suffering as a result of the conflict with Israel. Now, however, one can find in Arab media outlets more criticism of the Palestinians and their leadership than in Western media, or even in Israeli media.

Until recently, for most Arabs, the terms peace and normalization (with Israel) were associated with extremely negative connotations: humiliation, submission, defeat and shame. No longer. Many Arabs are openly talking about their desire for peace with Israel. These Arabs are saying that they are looking forward to reaping the fruits of peace with Israel and that it is time that Arab countries prioritize their own interests.

Of course, none of this means that the entire Arab world has changed course and is ready to recognize Israel and establish relations with it. The voices of the Arabs and Muslims who reject any peace treaty with Israel remain vocal and representative of the sentiments of the majority of the people in the Arab and Islamic countries, especially those that have not educated their public for peace.

Yet, it is remarkable to see how an increasing number of Arabs are airing their views regarding Israel and the Palestinians in the public sphere. The message coming from these Arabs: "We helped the Palestinians for many years; we gave them money; we gave them weapons, and some of us even fought wars with Israel because of them. In the end, we discovered that our Palestinian brothers are ungrateful, obstinate, lack good leadership and are refusing to move on with their lives." The Arabs are telling the Palestinians: "You no longer have a veto on peace with Israel."

Most importantly, the Arabs of the Gulf are openly admitting that it is Iran, and not Israel, that poses a major threat to peace and stability in the Middle East. The Gulf Arabs are saying that Iran and its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies -- such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah -- are destroying Arab countries and dragging them toward more bloodshed, violence and chaos.

As Saudi writer Mohammed al-Sheikh recently noted:

"For us in the Gulf, Israel is no longer the No. 1 enemy, as it was before the Persian mullahs seized control of Iran in 1979 and began exporting their revolution, or before Erdogan assumed the presidency in Turkey and worked to restore the Ottoman occupation of the Arab world."

Al-Sheikh said that the Gulf Arabs are the only ones entitled to assess the dangers and threats surrounding them:

"It is we, not other Arabs, who assess the dangers surrounding us and arrange our priorities. The problem is that most Arabs, including the Palestinians, insist on playing the role of guardians over us and on defining for us our priorities. They continue to argue that the mullahs of Iran and Erdogan's Turkey do not pose a threat to us as much as Israel does."

Praising the prospect of peace and normalization with Israel, the Saudi writer pointed out that:

"Israel is an advanced and superior country in all fields, and by creating a space for peaceful cooperation with it, we believe that we will benefit from its progress and superiority."

Arabs who are opposed to peace with Israel, al-Sheikh added, "do not care about development and modernization, and that is why they are at the bottom of countries in terms of modernity and development."

Echoing a common theme in the Gulf states nowadays, al-Sheikh said that peace with Israel would benefit the Arabs as much as Israel. He is saying, in other words, that the Arabs stand to gain a lot from making peace with Israel.

"We are certain that our cooperation with the superior Israel and the US will definitely affect our national interests, and it will have the best impact on our national security, specifically toward our enemies, and it will positively reflect on our development."

Ahmad al Garni, editor of the Saudi newspaper Sada al Hijaz, said that the days when Arabs used Israel to scare other Arabs are finally gone. "Scaring us with Israel has become a thing of the past," al-Garni wrote.

"We are not afraid of Israel. We are not cowards. Dealing with Israel does not mean that we love it. It's one thing to love Israel, and another thing to have commercial, economic and political relations with it."

Expressing growing disillusionment with the Palestinians in the Arab countries, Saudi writer Amal Abdel Aziz al-Hazany said that the Palestinians who are now condemning the UAE and Bahrain for making peace with Israel were among the first Arabs to normalize their relations with Israel when they signed the 1993 Oslo Accord.

Al-Hazany pointed out that Iranian meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians has resulted in the separation of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and triggered a power struggle between the two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, that continues to this day.

She said that despite Iran's endorsement of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Arabs continue to support the Palestinian cause in international forums and remind the international community on every occasion that the Palestinian issue is the Arabs' first concern. Al-Hazany also noted that funds nevertheless continued to flow to the Palestinians, especially from the Gulf states:

"The Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, have provided everything possible in favor of the Palestinian issue, and millions of dollars have not stopped flowing to the PLO, without accountability, but with the hope that they would spend this money to provide a decent life for the Palestinians... Can the Arab countries be blamed today for looking after their interests by establishing open relations with Israel? Times change, everything has changed, except for the Palestinian mood that rejects anything and everything. It is not in the Palestinians' interest to adopt a negative attitude towards the countries that decide to normalize the relationship with Israel, which is increasing and will increase with time."

Emirati political analyst Issa bin Arabi Albuflasah expressed outrage and disgust over the Palestinian leadership's recurring insults and attacks on the Gulf states for daring to seek peace with Israel. "Palestinian leaders are the main cause for the suffering of their people," Albuflasah remarked. "They have achieved nothing for the Palestinians. They only care about power and achieving personal and partisan gains at the expense of the Palestinian issue."

Accusing the Palestinians of being ungrateful, the Emirati analyst said:

"The UAE and the rest of the Gulf states opened their doors and institutions to the Palestinians, where they lived as brothers, enjoying everything that the citizen enjoys, and receiving care and attention. The Palestinians are now responding by insulting us and aligning themselves with Iran, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood."

Saudi writer Mohammed al-Saed also lashed out at the Palestinians and accused them of living in "a miserable film."

"Human history will not see the birth of a Palestinian politician. I wish to remind everyone of the weakness and confusion that dominates the Palestinian issue and of the guns and explosives that were directed mostly at Arab and Western civilians to cover up the [Palestinian] state of bankruptcy."

Noting that Palestinians have a long history of rejecting peace offers with Israel, he said that the Palestinians did not bother to inform their Arab brothers of their intention to sign the Oslo Accords:

"It was excessive selfishness from [former PLO leader Yasser] Arafat and his unfortunate negotiating delegation who participated in Oslo. Within 50 years, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and many Arab countries paid a heavy price and fought several wars on behalf of the Palestinians. Yet Arafat did not let them know about the negotiations that led to the signing of the Oslo Accords."

Explaining why Arabs are now moving closer to Israel, Saudi writer Fahd al Degaither commented:

"Geopolitically speaking, new enemies of the Arabs have appeared in the region, with new and very dangerous ambitions that are declared and different from those of Israel. We were told that Israel's slogan was [to expand] 'From the Euphrates to the Nile.' Iran, however, does not hide its expansionist ideological trend, which it is already practicing through its militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Turkey, on the other hand, is seeking to seize new sources of energy in Libya and has sights on Africa along the Red Sea. These developments prompted the moderate Arabs to start reconsidering previous their political positions."

Saudi writer Osama Yamani concurred:

"Our enemy today is Iran and Turkey, who occupy Arab lands in the name of the Palestinian issue. As for the enemy of the Palestinians at home, they are the corrupt leaders and traitors who rest in the bosom of Iran. For us, the real issue now is development, peace and justice that were stolen from the Arab world and forgotten by the Arab peoples. The Palestinian issue concerns the Arab peoples who want a solution, but the leaders benefit from the status quo. These leaders benefit from the problems and suffering of their people. There is no solution under corrupt leaderships. The Palestinian leadership is in the hands of traitors and beneficiaries."

Saudi writer Saeed al-Farha al-Ghamdi, in an article published in the Saudi newspaper al-Madina on September 4, says he can't understand why the Palestinians fail to read reality. "The Palestinian issue is in retreat and Palestinian leaders are moving in the opposite direction, as if their minds have been frozen. The Palestinians have become lost and without a leadership that looks after their interests," al-Ghamdi said, urging the Palestinians to keep a distance from Iran, Turkey and Qatar, "which have agendas that seek to exploit the [Palestinian] issue."

Saudi writer and researcher Fahd al-Shkiran advised the Palestinians to "catch up" with the normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. "The historic agreement will change the face of the region," al-Shkiran wrote.

"It is tantamount to turning the tables on the axis of resistance and its terrorist militias. It is not reasonable for the Palestinian Authority to remain in its negative attitude regarding the changes that are sweeping the world."

Al-Shkiran also advised the Palestinians to hold their leaders accountable on two levels:

"The first is political accountability: The reasons and causes of the continued rejection of all realistic deals that were offered to them since the beginning of the problem until today. Second: Opening the files of corruption. The Palestinian has the right to ask about the billions of dollars paid by the Gulf states for the Palestinian cause. All that money has disappeared."

Judging from the comments of many Gulf Arabs, it is evident that a growing number of Arabs realize that they have been misled about Israel for decades. They were brainwashed to believe that Israel was the true enemy of all Arabs. It is refreshing to see that many Arabs have become aware of the misconceptions and lies they were fed all that time. The Palestinians, however, are unlikely to see similar changes as long as their leaders continue to inform them, in no uncertain terms, that normalization and peace with Israel constitute the high crime of treason.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16518/arabs-israel-enemy

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US plans to enforce UN sanctions on Iran with its own action - Reuters and ILH Staff

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by Reuters and ILH Staff 

Washington could deny access to the US market to anyone who trades in weapons with Iran, says US Special Representative for Venezuela and Iran Elliott Abrams.

The United States said on Wednesday it plans to impose sanctions on those who violate a UN arms embargo on Iran, which Washington says will now stay in place instead of expiring in October as agreed under a 2015 nuclear deal.

US Special Representative for Venezuela and Iran Elliott Abrams said Washington could deny access to the US market to anyone who trades in weapons with Iran.

In 2018, Trump quit the flawed Iran nuclear deal due to ongoing Iranian belligerence in the region and continued development of its ballistic missile capabilities and reimposed US sanctions. Washington also says it has triggered a return of all UN sanctions on Iran, which would take effect this weekend.

But the other parties to the nuclear deal -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- and most of the UN Security Council have said they do not believe the United States can reimpose the UN sanctions.

"It's like pulling a trigger and no bullet comes out," a senior UN Security Council diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "There will be no snapback, the sanctions will remain suspended, the JCPOA (nuclear deal) will remain in place."

Asked if Washington is "making concrete plans now for secondary sanctions" to enforce the arms embargo, Abrams told reporters: "We are, in many ways, and we will have some announcements over the weekend and more announcements on Monday and then subsequent days next week."

Diplomats have said few nations are likely to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran.

Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, "We'll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday described the opposition to Washington as a "victory of the Iranian nation and the disgraceful defeat of the United States in activation of the snapback mechanism."


Reuters and ILH Staff

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/09/17/us-plans-to-enforce-un-sanctions-on-iran-with-its-own-action/

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