GOP candidate Dalia al-Aqidi on challenging Ilhan Omar, being ignored by mainstream media - Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Brian Flood

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by Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Brian Flood

As a Muslim immigrant and an outspoken supporter of President Trump, al-Aqidi vows to give back to the country she loves so much by running for Congress and seeking to help flip Minnesota's 5th District seat in the House of Representatives back to Republicans. She competes in her primary race on April 5.

Media Angle is a column offering perspectives on today's media landscape from the newsmakers themselves.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, has become a household name as a member of the so-called Democratic "Squad" that was elected to Congress in 2018. The Somali-born member of the House has quickly become a prominent voice of the progressive left often at the center of controversy, from her war of words with President Trump to allegations of engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Dalia al-Aqidi is hoping to defeat Omar and turn her seat red in November.

Growing up in Iraq under the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein, al-Aqidi said she felt like a "hostage" without the freedom to express herself, as the Iraqi regime controlled the media and forbade any criticism of the government.

"Freedom was a forbidden word. Freedom was a word that we dreamt of and that we yearned for," al-Aqidi told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) audience in late February.

In 1988, al-Aqidi and her family fled Iraq and arrived in the United States as refugees, and she later became an American citizen. She emerged as a broadcast journalist to audiences in the Middle East to push back against "poisonous" regional outlets like Al Jazeera.

As a Muslim immigrant and an outspoken supporter of President Trump, al-Aqidi vows to give back to the country she loves so much by running for Congress and seeking to help flip Minnesota's 5th District seat in the House of Representatives back to Republicans. She competes in her primary race on April 5.

Speaking to Fox News' Media Angle at CPAC, al-Aqidi took a shot at CNN, talked about how her background as a journalist helps her on the campaign trail, and how she thinks the media can restore trust with the American people.

MEDIA ANGLE: How does your journalism background carry over into your political run?
Dalia al-Aqidi: Well, it helps me with my campaign because I get people to talk naturally and that's who I am. That's why I've been doing journalism for 31 years. And nationally, when I sit with anybody, even if I don't sit next to someone and there is a wall, I will get the wall to talk. So these skills help a lot for me, in a very short period of time in the district, to get to know so many people and so many residents... I could talk to them, I could feel what their problems are because that's what I've been doing for the past 30 years.

MA: If you could sit down with Ilhan Omar as a reporter and not as an opponent, what would you ask her?

al-Aqidi: Oh, my God. I'm not even interested anymore because I've asked for an interview right after she got elected and my producers never had an answer.

MA: So she wouldn't even talk to you?

al-Aqidi: No, no. And I reached out on Twitter to her saying, "I know who is grooming you," and I was shadowbanned on Twitter. And then I decided, "You know what? I don't want to interview her anymore. I'm going to her district to talk to her people." And I kept coming after that to do my research, until I fell in love with Minneapolis, and that's why I decided to move.

MA: You mention that you were 'shadowbanned' on Twitter -- can you explain?

al-Aqidi: He--[al-Aqidi campaign communications director] David Reaboi--discovered it. I was doing my things on Twitter, posting things and then I got a text from David saying "Dalia, where have you been?" And I was like, "What? I've been on Twitter." So apparently, with my phone and with my friends, with David, we tried to reach out to find me, to search for my name, I was nowhere to be found for a few days... I asked Twitter--no answer. And then I got an email from Twitter saying "Oh, it was an error. We fixed it." ... What was it, a "glitch" or an "error?"

David Reaboi: Yeah, you weren't able to auto-complete. So you would look for Dalia at the time, it was a different username @Dalia30 and nothing would come up.

al-Aqidi: So you find all the Dalias on this planet except me.

MA: Following the 2018 midterms, there has been glowing coverage of the diversity among the newly-elected Democratic lawmakers. Do you think there's any difference between how the media portrays the diversity of Democrats versus the diversity of GOP candidates?

al-Aqidi: You would not know unless you read Fox, or you watch Fox News, or you read the right publications. Other than this, you would never know.

Video

MA: Is there any media outlet that has offended you the most with the way they cover Ilhan Omar?

al-Aqidi: CNN, definitely. CNN is No.1... When it comes to Ilhan Omar, Al Jazeera is No. 1-- Al Jazeera Arabic and English, because the way they interview her, it's disgusting and it's sickening to every journalist on this planet. CNN as well. But a couple of months ago when Iraqi protestors, when the peaceful protestors were protesting in the middle of Baghdad, and when the Shia militias attacked the U.S. embassy, CNN and other mainstream media kept insisting that these are the peaceful protestors, giving a very big chance for the Shia militias and giving them legitimacy... I myself emailed all the mainstream media, especially CNN, and they just never corrected it. So many things like this have been happening.

MA: Can you speak more broadly to the current state of the mainstream media and whether you think Republicans have been treated fairly?

al-Aqidi: I don't think Republicans have been treated fairly. They were never treated fairly. Conservatives, in general, are never treated fairly. And it's not just in the U.S. Look at the U.K. Even BBC. People think that BBC is independent, which it is not. Conservatives, in general, have not been treated fairly all over the world.

MA: How do you think you've been treated by the media?

al-Aqidi: If we're talking about the mainstream media, I don't think I've seen my name anywhere. I've been mentioned a couple of times because of the race, but nobody ever came out or tried to reach out... We all know that mainstream media couldn't care less about us, and we all know that it's their fight as well, and that's what they think they're doing. And that's why people like us will never be talked about in the mainstream media outlets. But they keep painting that beautiful picture of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Sanders and all the far-left.

MA: There is distrust for the media among many Americans. As a journalist, what is something you think the media can do to restore the trust it once had?

al-Aqidi: Stop telling lies. They should stop telling lies.


Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Brian Flood

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/media/dalia-al-aqidi-ilhan-omar-media

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List of thousands of Nazi war criminals uncovered in Argentina - Nissan Tzur

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by Nissan Tzur

A list of 12,000 Nazi officers who fled to Argentina uncovered by Argentine investigator. Swiss bank believed to hold bank accounts of some.

A list of 12,000 Nazi officers who fled to Argentina following the defeat of the Third Reich was uncovered at the former Nazi headquarters in Buenos Aires by Argentine investigator Pedro Filipuzzi.

The documents revealed that most of the officers had bank accounts in Switzerland.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US has asked the Zurich-based Credit Suisse investment bank to identify the inactive accounts that have remained since, claiming many of the center's funds were stolen from these bank accounts.

"We believe that these accounts, which have been dormant for a long time, hold money looted from Jewish victims," ​​the Wiesenthal Center stated. In a letter addressed to Credit Suisse bank manager Christian Küng, Wiesenthal Center officials said, "We believe that it's highly likely that these dormant accounts hold funds looted from Jewish victims under the Nuremberg Laws of the 1930s."

"We are aware that you have already been sued by ex-Nazi heirs who are alleged to be on the now-discovered lists," the letter continued.

The Wiesenthal Center claims that many of the Nazis whose names appear in the newly unveiled documents owned accounts in one or more bank accounts in the Swiss bank, which later became Credit Suisse.

Nazi Germany began to plunder Jewish property shortly after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, when huge sums of money were looted from European Jews. Much of the funds was transferred to Nazi accounts at the Swiss bank. Swiss bank chiefs said that in 1997-1999 they carried out an investigation into claims that the Nazis held bank accounts in Switzerland, but following the new disclosure, they promised to "re-examine this affair."


Nissan Tzur

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276881

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Kurds and Israel: A real love story ? The unknown truth - Uzay Bulut

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by Uzay Bulut

Read what the Kurds really think of Israel by a writer who is Turkish-Muslim born and now living in Israel, who cannot return to her native country due to her criticism of Erdogan.

“Down with America! Down with Israel!,” chanted thousands in the majority-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir who joined an anti-Israel protest on February 9.

What made them so furious was the U.S. administration’s peace plan, which calls for “a reasonable two-state solution” for Israelis and Palestinian-Arabs. 

After the Turkish government and parliament condemned the peace plan, the “Foundation of Lovers of the Prophet” and the “Society of the Oppressed” organized a demonstration in Diyarbakir entitled “Jerusalem is ours!”

The demonstration started with some verses from the Koran and songs about Jerusalem. The participants often shouted “Allahu akbar” [Allah is the greatest] during the demonstration, the Anadolu Agency reported. 

Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu, the head of the Kurdish Islamist Hüda-Par (Free Cause Party), affiliated with the Kurdish Hizbullah, delivered a speech at the protest. He said, in part:
"If Jerusalem falls, Cairo, Baghdad, Ankara, Beirut, Amman will also fall. If Jerusalem falls, Tehran, Khartoum, Diyarbakır, Islamabad will not survive. If Jerusalem falls, they will set their eyes on Mecca and Medina.  Jerusalem is the honor of the ummah [Islamic nation]. Unless Jerusalem is saved from captivity, the ummah will not get rid of the contempt it is in. The ummah will not be able to gain liberty until Jerusalem is free.”

Yapıcıoğlu called the US administration’s peace plan “evil” and “unacceptable”. He said the ummah has united for the cause of Jerusalem and added: “We’re ready to pay every price for Jerusalem.”

The wars, destructions and refugee crises in Yemen, Iraq and Syria are happening only to “keep the al-Aqsa mosque in captivity”, Yapicioglu asserted, expressing the widespread, lazy Muslim conspiracy theory that all troubles in the Muslim world are caused by Israel. 

“Today, the problems among Kurds, Turks, Arabs, and Persians are kept unresolved so that a handful of Zionists can sleep well. Before Jerusalem is free, the blood and tears in the ummah will not end,” he added.

In an interview with the Anadolu Agency, Hüsamettin Bönül, an organizer of the protest, referred to Israel as “tumor”:

“It is a significant duty of every caring citizen and every Muslim to keep talking about the issue of Israel, which is a problem of Muslims and which emerged as a tumor of the world.”

He said this was not their first anti-Israel protest and that they had organized many more.
The anti-Israel stance has traditionally been strong within other Kurdish groups, as well.

In May 2018, Hamas coordinated its supporters in Gaza to engage in violent protests and try to breach the Gaza security fence, to which Israeli forces responded in self-defense. Sadly, these incidents were not accurately reported by much of the mainstream media either in Turkey or the West.

Selahattin Demirtaş, the head of the pro-Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party), joined the anti-Israel chorus in Turkey and tweeted: “I curse the boundless barbarism of the government of Israel. I wish mercy from Allah to the massacred sons and daughters of the oppressed Palestinian people and healing to their injured. A powerful voice and a joint stance are required to be able to stop the savagery of the Israeli government immediately.”

In another Twitter post Demirtaş called on everyone in Turkey to organize a huge demonstration in Istanbul to protest and stop Israel’s “savagery.”  

The HDP also presented a proposal to Turkey’s parliament that demands all political, economic and military agreements with Israel, including the one that recognizes Jerusalem as its capital, be cancelled. Ironically, the proposal was rejected by votes of the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the opposition MHP, the Nationalist Movement Party.

Sadly, the Kurdish support for Palestinian-Arab “politicians” who have dedicated their lives to exterminating Israel has a long history. For instance, Palestinian-Arab terrorist Leila Khaled, veteran of several hijacking attempts and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), joined a congress of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK) in 2018 and delivered a speech there.

She said, in part:
“I will make a request from you; I want you to raise the boycott movement against Israel. Wherever these Zionist powers are, we must raise the struggle against them shoulder to shoulder.”

Khaled also wrote a “solidarity letter” to Leyla Güven, a Kurdish MP of the HDP, who was on a hunger strike to demand an end to the “isolation” for Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

“The hunger strikes of the revolutionaries in the prisons of Turkey and Israel are done to break the dominant systems that want to silence the peoples who want freedom, justice and democracy,” Khaled said, in part.

The HDP published this letter on its official website, which demonstrates that in the party’s imagination, Turkey and Israel represent the same “oppressive” mentality.

The HDP also described Khaled as someone “that has played an important role in carrying the struggle of the Palestinian people to the international arena.”

However, the PFLP has carried out dozens of terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East. These include the Avivim school bus massacre in Israel in May 1970, which killed 9 children and 3 adults, and the massacre in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona in April 1974, which killed 18 people including 8 children. 

Palestinian-Arab terror groups are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israeli civilians. See a list of some major terror attacks against Israelis between 1948 and 1967 here. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

“While the Palestinians claim that terrorism is a response to ‘occupation,’ the fact is that Palestinian terrorism predates Israel's presence in the territories. Numerous terrorist attacks murdered and maimed Israeli civilians during the two decades before 1967 (and even before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948). Therefore, terrorism was and still is nothing less than a tool intended to eventually bring about the destruction of Israel itself.” 

Khaled also visited the Kurdish MP during her hunger strike. “Your name [Khaled’s name] has always existed in the Kurdistan struggle… We the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples are right,” Güven told Khaled. 

 “Our general secretary, Ahmad Saadat, is sending his regards to you,” Khaled said.  

But Saadat has been in jail not for his “human rights advocacy” but for his involvement in terror attacks. But again, disinformation and propaganda against Israel seems to have worked wonders in Turkey.  Khaled, Saadat and many other Palestinian-Arab figures and organizations that have the blood of innocent civilians on their hands and who do not even recognize Israel’s right to exist are hailed as heroes by many people in Turkey.

And it is not only the state of Israel that is unjustly targeted by Kurdish groups operating in and outside of Turkey. Jewish and pro-Israel lobbies have also been subjected to their slander. Bese Hozat, the co-head of the Kurdistan Communities Union or the KCK, for instance, targeted Israeli, Armenian and Greek organizations in the US, feeding the widespread, bigoted conspiracy theories against these communities in Turkey. In 2014, she said, in part:
“There are parallel states in Turkey outside of the official state. For example, the Fethullah Gülen community is a parallel state… The Israeli lobby and the nationalist Armenian and Greek lobbies are also parallel states. Those parallel states have serious, mutual interests.”

And in 2013, the minutes of the meeting that Abdullah Öcalan, the head of the PKK, had with the pro-Kurdish BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) leaked to the press. During the meeting, Öcalan said, in part:
 "Three types of parallel states operate in Turkey. These relationships began to be sabotaged. They are not ordinary lobbies. Jewish, Armenian and Greek lobbies in the US are strategically and tactically intervening [in Turkey]. All three originated from Anatolia. There is a so-called government, a so-called parliament. [The Turkish political parties] CHP and MHP are projections of the parallel state; they’re the simple tools [of parallel states]. They’ve infiltrated the AKP, the media and businessmen.”

In countries like Turkey where anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments are already extremely high and where many people – particularly youths - are easily manipulated to violently target others for their ethnicity, religion or nationhood, such antagonistic and factually incorrect statements are very dangerous. They do not serve the cause of “freedom, justice and democracy” that Khaled and many Kurdish politicians often talk about.  They nurture ignorance and incite people to hatred and possibly to violence. They make it harder for peaceful coexistence to exist in the region, which is already marked by deep religious, ethnic or tribal divisions and enmity.

It seems that many Kurdish groups, political leaders and individuals need a serious education on the history of Israel and the Israeli-Arab issues. For not only the Islamist Hüda-Par, but also the non-Islamist HDP and PKK as well as other Kurdish organizations, have been uninformedly targeting and smearing Israel.

However, genuine and real solidarity or relations between nations or political groups should be based on reciprocity, truth, honesty and fairness. 

Apparently, so many Israelis have been so generous in their sympathy and support for Kurdish political or militant groups without even knowing much about what these groups really think of Israel.


Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist; political analyst and Muslim affiars expert formerly based in Ankara. Her writings have appeared in various outlets such as the Washington Times, Christian Post, Arutz Sheva, Jerusalem Post and Gatestone Institute.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25322

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Great revolt caves uncovered - ILTV

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by ILTV

Israeli researcher finds 2000 year-old caves with help of Josephus Flavius.

ILTV

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276931

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The undemocratic alliance bent on toppling Netanyahu - Alex Traiman

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by Alex Traiman

While the public has chosen to stand with Netanyahu even as he is about to face trial, the opposition is prepared to ignore the will of the public and twist democratic norms for their own machinations of power.

In Israel’s third election in less than one year, embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defeated his closest challenger by three Knesset seats (36-33), and his bloc of right-wing allies defeated the opposing left-wing bloc supporting challenger Benny Gantz by a stunning 18 seats (58-40). Yet, similar to the first two election contests, Netanyahu still remains precariously shy of a parliamentary majority. 

Coalition negotiations have yet to officially begin, and just three of the remaining 62 Knesset members from outside of Netanyahu’s bloc could push Israel’s tenured premier over the 61-seat majority threshold. By doing so, they would bring much-needed stability to a convoluted parliamentary political system whose efficacy is now being rightfully questioned. 

The parliamentarians who refuse to join the right-wing bloc are united by a singular goal: to dethrone Netanyahu. Yet these 62 opposing members of Parliament are incapable of forming their own governing coalition. In addition to their unwillingness to sit with Netanyahu, they have all repeatedly stated that they are ideologically opposed to sitting with one another. 

This opposition includes the Blue and White Party, a mini-coalition of center-right and center-left parties that came together to challenge Netanyahu, the seven-seat far-left Labor-Meretz alliance, the seven-seat secular right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman and a 15-seat Joint Arab List.

Since the establishment of the modern State of Israel, no Arab party has ever joined any Israeli government right or left, and the Joint List has expressed no intention of joining a coalition led by either Netanyahu or Gantz. Furthermore, Lieberman has vowed not to sit in any government that includes the anti-Zionist Arab parties. 

Excluding the self-stated anti-Zionist Joint List, the opposition totals an underwhelming 47 mandates—well short of a 61-seat majority and a whopping 11 seats smaller than Netanyahu’s bloc of 58 seats.

By hook or by crook

For years, Netanyahu’s opponents have been trying to replace Israel’s longest-serving prime minister by hook or by crook. And since they have failed to remove him at the polls, they now seek to create a parliamentary putsch to remove their political nemesis from office.

Blue and White has announced its intention to advance a parliamentary bill, with the backing of the 62-member opposition, to prohibit a prime minister from serving while under indictment.

Meanwhile, Israeli law explicitly permits a prime minister to remain in office while facing criminal charges under indictment. The law even permits a prime minister to continue in office if convicted, until all legal appeals are exhausted.

In response, Netanyahu stated that Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is attempting to “steal the elections,” and that advancing such a bill “undermines the foundations of democracy.”

The highly questionable cases against Netanyahu have been openly simmering for the past two years with numerous pieces of police evidence being illegally leaked for public consumption. Netanyahu has maintained his innocence in each of the cases.

More than 2 million Israelis have voted again and again for Netanyahu and his allies, believing that the charges are either contrived or not serious enough to warrant removing the successful leader from office. Each vote has been a democratic referendum on Netanyahu’s ability to serve under indictment.

Just prior to the elections, Blue and White pasted large billboards across Israel likening Netanyahu to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an Islamist dictator who has been incrementally rolling back democratic freedoms in Turkey.

Yet it is Netanyahu who has consistently returned his mandate to govern to the people. And while the public has chosen to stand with Netanyahu even as he is about to face trial on March 17, it is an opposition concocted of disparate agendas that is prepared to ignore the will of the public and twist democratic norms for their own machinations of power.

Meanwhile, the stakes have never been greater for the State of Israel. Iran is racing towards nuclear breakout and regional hegemony across Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Gaza has increasingly stepped up rocket attacks on Israeli population centers. Syria continues to remain a state of disarray, while Egypt and Jordan’s leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of growing extremism.

In a released recording, adviser Israel Bachar, who was fired after the leak, reported that fellow Blue and White Party member and MK Omer Yankelevich “says he is stupid and a complete nobody and she says ‘he can’t be prime minister.’ ” Bachar also said Gantz “doesn’t have the courage to attack Iran” and would be “a threat to the Israeli nation” as prime minister.

Perhaps more important is the rollout of the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” Mideast plan. In the coming weeks, following completion of a careful bilateral mapping process, Israel will be permitted to apply full sovereignty to every settlement and outpost in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as the strategic Jordan Valley.

Despite tepid approval of the U.S. plan by Gantz, the left-wing Labor-Meretz Party is staunchly opposed to Israel’s application of sovereignty over any of the territories, as is the Arab Joint List. Furthermore, Gantz and his advisers have been repeatedly antagonistic to the Trump administration, some comparing the U.S. president to Adolf Hitler. Both Gantz and party No. 2 Yair Lapid have repeatedly attacked Netanyahu for his close relationship with the president, which they say has cost Israel bipartisan support in Congress. As such, Israelis cannot count on Gantz as prime minister to carry out the application of sovereignty over territories central to Israel’s security and biblical narrative.

And while Gantz has significant military experience, he has zero political experience, with the exception of losing three successive election campaigns that have been peppered with numerous rhetorical gaffes.

These are the considerations that Israelis have weighed when going to the polls. And while the overwhelming majority of the Jewish candidates chose to keep the man who has arguably been the most successful prime minister in Israel’s history at the helm, it is an undemocratic alliance that will use any tool at their disposal to send Netanyahu packing, even if the means they apply spit directly in the face of Israel’s democratically elected outcome.


Alex Traiman is managing director and Jerusalem bureau chief of Jewish News Syndicate.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-undemocratic-alliance-bent-on-toppling-netanyahu/

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Gaza, Elections and the Corbynization of the Democratic Party - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

The Israeli public determines how Israel will respond to aggression.

The hundred rockets and missiles that Gazan terrorists launched into Israel this week served as yet another reminder that we have an account to manage with Gaza.

“Manage,” not “settle,” because we lack the opportunity to settle our score with Gaza. There is not today, and for the foreseeable future, there will not be any regime in Gaza that will agree to set aside its war with Israel and leave us alone.

Gaza, like Judea and Samaria, is a long-term problem that requires management, not resolution.

To understand what needs to be done, we have to focus on the two sides of the problem.

First, Gaza is a military problem. To successfully and permanently quell the security threat Gaza poses to Israel, the IDF requires the capacity to operate freely in Gaza – as it does in Judea and Samaria. Israel built its capacity to operate throughout Judea and Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

In 1995, Israel signed the Interim Agreement with the PLO. The deal set out the basis for the transfer of authorities and powers to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

The PLO agreed to combat terrorism in all the areas transferred to its authority. Area A, which encompasses the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria was an area under full Palestinian security and civilian authority. In Area B, which includes the Palestinian villages, the PLO received full civil authority and police authorities, while Israel retained what was referred to as “overriding security authority,” or, in plain English, the authority to conduct counterterrorism operations at will.

Area C encompasses the rest of Judea and Samaria, including all Israeli military installations, Israeli cities, towns and villages and Jordan Valley. There the PLO received limited civil authority and no military authority.

From 1996, when the PLO set up shop in Judea and Samaria until Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the PLO transformed Area A into one large terrorist infrastructure. The suicide bombers that massacred Israeli civilians on a near-daily basis from 2000 through 2002 were trained and equipped in the bomb factories and terror bases in Area A.

Following a month in which 130 Israelis were slaughtered in suicide bombings and shootings, including 30 in the Seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in April 2002, the government ordered the IDF to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

The implication was clear. The strategic goal of the operation was to militarily transform Area A, where the PLO had a free hand to behave like the Taliban, into Area B, where the IDF was capable of breaking up terror cells before they got up and running.

In the event, after one of the most complex urban warfare operations in history, and while sustaining significant battlefield losses, the IDF achieved the sought-after result. Since 2002, the IDF has been able to operate throughout Judea and Samaria. As a consequence, the PLO and its fellow terrorist groups have been unable to rebuild their suicide belt assembly lines or import or develop a rocket and missile industry.

The military reality in Gaza is similar to the situation that held in Judea and Samaria on the eve of Defensive Shield – just with missiles and rockets and more arms concentrated in far denser population centers. There are many reasons Israel has not undertaken an operation like Defensive Shield in Gaza to date. But they can be watered down to a simple cost-benefit analysis. The price of such a Defensive Shield-Gaza would be extremely high while the benefits Israel would obtain remain fiercely debated.

Rather than conduct a Defensive Shield, the government and IDF have adopted a strategy of minimizing risks and violence. The strategy is implemented at times by appeasing the Hamas regime through cash transfers from Qatar and the provision of work permits for Gazans in Israel.

The strategy is implemented at times through military operations – generally conducted from the air to minimize risk to troops. Every few years, Israel is required as it was in 2014, 2011, 2010, and 2008-09 to carry out a limited ground operation in Gaza to scale back Hamas’s military capabilities.

In the absence of a clear casus belli along the lines of a missile-launched Park Hotel massacre, it is hard to see Israel initiating an operation with a scope similar to that of Defensive Shield in Gaza. And so, in the coming years, Israel will be required to continue to act with varying degrees of force in Gaza to secure an acceptable quality of life for residents of southern Israel and to prevent Hamas from developing the capacity to pose a strategic threat to the country.

This brings us to the second aspect of the complex, long-term problem of Gaza – the diplomatic challenge. And this, in turn, forces us to consider the strategic implications of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential run.

Following Sanders’ landslide victory last Saturday in the Nevada caucuses, during Tuesday’s night Democratic debate, the radical senator from Vermont was center stage. Sanders is now the undisputed frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Towards the end of the debate, Sanders, who began referring to himself recently as “proud to be Jewish,” was asked about his view of Israel. He was also asked whether he plans to move the US Embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv.

The question came following Sanders’ wild attack on AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington earlier in the week. On Sunday, Sanders announced that he wouldn’t be participating in AIPAC’s annual policy conference. AIPAC, he alleged, serves as a “platform” for “leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”

In response to the Israel questions Tuesday night, Sanders said, “I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months. [He was a volunteer at a Communist kibbutz in the early 1960s, CBG] But what I happen to believe, right now, sadly, tragically, in Israel through Bibi Netanyahu you have a reactionary racist who is now running that country.”

As to whether or not he would remove the embassy from Jerusalem, Sanders replied, that it was “something that we would take into consideration.”

The primary threat Sanders poses to Israel, of course, is that he becomes the next President of the United States. But he poses an additional danger. If, as now seems likely, Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, he will transform the Democratic Party into an Americanized version of Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party. Like Labour under Corbyn, the Democrats under Sanders will become an anti-Semitic party that supports the boycott of Israel and gives a warm and supportive shoulder to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and their allies and partners. Sanders and his Democratic Party will reject the morality of Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, just as Corbyn and his people have done.

Sanders himself has said on numerous occasions that he sees Corbyn as his overseas twin and that his vision for the Democratic Party is to turn it into Corbyn’s Labour party in America.

Which brings us back to Gaza.

In a world where the best-case scenario has a Democratic Party that is openly hostile to Israel and its American Jewish supporters, and the worst-case scenario has the White House openly hostile to the Jewish state and its American Jewish supporters, how is Israel supposed to deal with Hamas/Gaza – the sweethearts of the radical left?

Since then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower compelled then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to withdraw IDF forces from the Sinai in 1956, a central plank of Israel’s national security doctrine has been to avoid going to war without US support. A Corbynized Democratic party – not to mention a Corbynized White House – will not back any Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Israel faced a similar quandary six years ago. In Operation Protective Edge, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon were blindsided when then-Secretary of State John Kerry adopted as the US position, Hamas’ ceasefire demands as presented by its representatives Turkey and Qatar.

They were stunned again when then-President Barack Obama decided to prohibit US civilian flights to Ben-Gurion International Airport in the middle of the war. They were shocked when the administration embargoed the supply of Hellfire missiles to the IDF and they were flummoxed by the steady stream of condemnations of IDF operations by senior administration spokesmen and officials.

At the time senior IDF officials directly involved in the General Staff deliberations revealed that Gantz did not comprehend the strategic implications of the administration’s behavior. A testament to the veracity of their claims came a year later when in defiance of Netanyahu, Gantz supported the 2015 nuclear deal the administration negotiated with Iran despite the fact that the agreement guaranteed Iran a nuclear arsenal within a decade and despite the fact that its inspection clauses were unenforceable.

During Operation Protective Edge, Netanyahu realized immediately what was happening and took unprecedented steps to scuttle the administration’s efforts to coerce Israel into accepting Hamas’ ceasefire demands.

Netanyahu created a coalition to bypass the Turkey-Qatar axis. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were members of the bloc. When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi demanded to mediate between Israel and Hamas, as had been Egypt’s general practice for decades, the Obama administration couldn’t figure out an excuse to deny him the role. When Sisi rejected Hamas’ ceasefire demands and embraced Israel’s conditions, it was Obama and Kerry’s turn to be flummoxed.

Parallel to those efforts, with support from key senators, Netanyahu worked with friendly governments – particularly Stephen Harper’s government in Canada and Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy to force the Obama administration to end its prohibition on civilian fights to Ben Gurion.

These actions by Netanyahu secured the IDF the time and the diplomatic over to do what needed to be done on the ground in Gaza.

The actions Netanyahu took were high risk. He couldn’t speak openly about the depth of the Obama administration’s animosity because doing so would have risked demoralizing the public and even instilling panic. He had to publicly support Obama and Kerry as they worked directly on Hamas’s behalf against Israel in order to keep channels of communication open and to preserve relations with more supportive Democrats.

Today when it is clear that another campaign in Gaza is just around the corner, and that that campaign won’t be the last one, we need to consider both the military and diplomatic conditions under which those campaigns are likely to be undertaken. This is doubly true in light of the Corbynization of the Democratic Party.

The Israeli public cannot influence the outcome of the US elections. But on Monday, it will determine how Israel will respond to aggression against it – whether that aggression emanates from Gaza or from Washington.

Caroline Glick

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/gaza-elections-and-corbynization-democratic-party-caroline-glick/

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ABA ‘deeply troubled’ by Schumer’s Supreme Court comments - Edmund DeMarche

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by Edmund DeMarche

Will Schumer be held accountable?

The American Bar Association said on Wednesday that it is "deeply troubled" by a comment made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., outside the Supreme Court that many said was a direct threat to two sitting justices.

Schumer was at a rally over a high-profile abortion case while the case played out inside. Schumer named Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and, in an impassioned speech, said, "You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Video

Justin Goodman, a Schumer spokesman, responded after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement on what he called "threatening" comments. Goodman said that Schumer was addressing Republican lawmakers when he said a "price" would be paid.

Goodman noted that the chief justice remained quiet in recent weeks when President Trump questioned the impartiality of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

"Personal attacks on judges by any elected officials, including the president, are simply inappropriate," the ABA’s statement read. "Such comments challenge the reputation of the third, co-equal branch of our government; the independence of the judiciary; and the personal safety of judicial officers. They are never acceptable."

Trump himself weighed in on Schumer's comments, tweeting, “If a Republican did this, he or she would be arrested, or impeached. Serious action MUST be taken NOW!”

Mark Levin, the “Life, Liberty, & Levin” host, said he wants Schumer to be “sanctioned by the Bar, admonished by the Senate, investigated by the Senate ethics committee, and even reviewed” by the Department of Justice.

"No individual, let alone the Senate Democrat leader, who is also a lawyer, should escape accountability for his loathsome conduct," Levin said.

Fox News' Gregg Re, Joseph A. Wulfshon and the Associated Press contributed to this report


Edmund DeMarche

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aba-deeply-troubled-by-schumers-supreme-court-comments

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Biden Rising - Joseph Klein

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by Joseph Klein

Will he be able to save his party from its communist odyssey?

Former Vice President Joe Biden had a superlative Super Tuesday. Although his closest challenger Bernie Sanders won in California, the largest state up for grabs on Tuesday, Joe Biden ran the table virtually everywhere else in the country. He won in the Northeast with victories in Massachusetts and Maine. He won the second largest state contested on Tuesday, Texas. He won Minnesota in the upper Midwest and swept across the South in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. He also picked up Oklahoma. In addition to California, Sanders won his home state of Vermont, as well as Utah and Colorado. Sanders, the front runner going into Super Tuesday, is now behind Biden in the delegate tally – 566 to 501 as of the writing of this article. With Mike Bloomberg’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Biden, following Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg who dropped their candidacies and endorsed Biden before Super Tuesday, Biden is now in a commanding position as the sole survivor navigating the so-called “center” lane. 

Bernie Sanders significantly underperformed. Last minute undecided voters went in large numbers for Joe Biden, including in delegate-rich Texas where Sanders had been leading in recent polling. Minnesota, known for its ultra-liberal streak, became Joe Biden country after its home state Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race. Elizabeth Warren's candidacy is on life support after her humiliating third place finish in her home state of Massachusetts. She is reportedly reassessing her next steps.

On the surface at least, it looks like the socialist wing of the Democratic Party took it on the chin. A National Review column called Tuesday night’s results “the biggest setback for socialism since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.” The more “moderate” wing coalesced in support of Joe Biden, who pulled together a broad coalition of African Americans and other centrist voters older than 45. Bernie Sanders was unable to broaden his own coalition beyond the young voters, Latinos and leftists who want to fundamentally transform America’s economic and political systems from the bottom up.

However, before prematurely writing an obituary for socialism in this country, consider this. While socialism’s messengers have faltered, their radical message remains very much alive. Bernie Sanders, along with Elizabeth Warren, have moved ideas considered too far out for prime time just four years ago to the mainstream of today’s Democratic Party.

For example, Democrat-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez popularized an ambitious Green New Deal plan that would drastically remake the U.S. economy by transitioning the United States to a 100 percent renewable energy system by 2035. Joe Biden’s website states that “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” He would take 15 more years than Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to reach the same objective of ensuring that “the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions.” Biden would also recommit the United States to the disastrous jobs-killing Paris Agreement on climate change, under which China committed to lax greenhouse gas emission targets by 2030 deemed “highly insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker.

Joe Biden is pushing for a roadmap to citizenship for nearly 11 million of those he calls “undocumented” or “unauthorized” immigrants – i.e., illegal aliens. Mike Bloomberg agreed with this sentiment, by the way. Here is what this ex presidential candidate-turned-Biden supporter said when he was still running for president: “One of the things in immigration is you’ve got to do some things quickly in immigration. Stop this craziness with 11 million people living in a shadow. You’ve got to give them a clear path to citizenship. You’ve got to staple a green card on every degree when they get out of college…”

Joe Biden, it should be remembered, raised his hand in the affirmative during the first Democrat primary debate last summer when asked whether his government health plan would provide coverage for “undocumented immigrants." Democratic-Socialist Sanders, as well as other debate participants in the so-called center lane such as Pete Buttigieg, also raised their hands. Biden may not yet embrace the Sanders version of “Medicare for All,” but he is willing to use taxpayers’ money to subsidize health care for illegal aliens. As President Trump tweeted at the time, “How about taking care of American Citizens first!?”

Biden’s alternative to the Sanders “Medicare for All” program, in which Biden offers massive new subsidies and a government-run “public option” plan, would still move the needle in the direction of much further government involvement in the health care industry. Its estimated cost is at least $750 billion over 10 years. Biden’s public option plan would cover abortion. At the same time, Biden is opposed to even modest incremental pro-life laws such as clinic regulations, waiting periods, and parental involvement laws, just like the extremists in his party.

Meagan Day, a writer for the socialist magazine Jacobin, and Bhaskar Sunkara, the socialist magazine’s editor, wrote an opinion column for the New York Times, entitled “Modern Day Debtors’ Prisons.” They wrote in support of Bernie Sanders’ call for an end to cash bail across the country. The authors observed that there was evidence of “the idea’s transformation from activist demand to mainstream policy proposal.” Joe Biden has proved their point. “Cash bail is the modern-day debtors’ prison,” Biden’s website says.

Joe Biden does not espouse communist ideology like Bernie Sanders does, and Biden has proclaimed that he’s “not the socialist” in the race. It is true that Biden does believe in some form of a capitalist system, although with far more burdensome government regulations and higher taxes. But the Democratic Party’s establishment “savior” will either lead, or be led by the nose, in the direction of the ideological base of today’s Democratic Party, which is built around socialist ideas including those he has already embraced.

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/joe-bidens-resurgence-dems-establishment-savior-joseph-klein/

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With Biden ascendant, it’s useful to remember just how awful he is - Andrea Widburg

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by Andrea Widburg

We should celebrate the fact that Democrats are finally recoiling from Bernie the Red, but it’s important to remember that Biden is a terrible candidate.

The specter of Americans voting for an open socialist is frightening. We're way past 1972, when Americans rejected a hard-left candidate. Since then, leftists acquired a stranglehold on education, creating a generation of young people who think socialism is cool. Bernie could have won.

Bernie’s probable departure shouldn’t cause us to ignore that Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He’s usually wrong, famously dishonest, almost as hard-left now in his policies as Bernie himself, corrupt, and showing signs of severe mental degradation.

(Regarding the incipient senility, Dorothy Parker’s cruel question when the famously taciturn Calvin Coolidge died comes to mind: “How can they tell?” The same can be said of Joe’s mental decay.)

With almost 50 years in office, there’s a laundry list of “awfuls” attached to Biden: Borking the esteemed Robert Bork, plagiarism, leading the hi-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas, crafting the 1994 crime law that warehoused generations of black men in American prisons, leading the intemperate pullout from Iraq that led to ISIS, and helping credit card companies ride roughshod over Americans all spring to mind.

Kyle Smith has an excellent run-down of some other painful and dirty Biden moments:

Even at his best, Biden was notorious for being loopy, digressive, and sloppy, and he’s long past his best. Clarence Thomas noted of Biden’s line of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings, “You have to sit there and look attentively at people [who] you know have no idea what they are talking about.” His bizarre 2012 debate with Paul Ryan consisted of bursts of strangely out-of-context laughter and boorish interruptions. His own aides panic every time he goes off-script, to such a degree that David Axelrod once quipped that Biden was being kept in a “candidate-protection program.” When he starts riffing, he is given to making false claims such as that he was arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison. His answer to all questions in debate is a subject, a verb, and Obama.
Moreover, Biden looks moderate only in the context of the insanity that is gripping the Democratic Party, only by comparison to wackadoodles such as Warren and Sanders. He has so far escaped scrutiny for the implications of his policy proposals, such as a “public option” for health insurance that would inevitably destroy the private insurance market. He was specifically asked whether this could happen by the New York Times and replied, “Bingo. . . . Sure they would.” He blithely said that when employer-based private health insurance dies out, people could simply go on “the Biden plan.” His health-care policy is just a slo-mo version of Sanders’s and Warren’s policy. He has called for massive tax hikes, offered public health care for illegal immigrants, said such immigrants should not be deported if they’re convicted of drunk driving, and endorsed the $93 trillion boondoggle known as the Green New Deal.

Tucker Carlson documents that Joe is willing to prostitute himself to Democrat Party extremists if it means finally winning the White House:



And then there’s Biden’s corruption. Yes, he didn’t enrich himself personally, but he used his political connections to set up crooked deals that sent millions of dollars to his family members. Had Trump done that, he would have been kicked out of office to universal approval.

Lastly, even honest left-of-center journalists are noting that, of late, Biden isn’t just being stupid, he’s decompensating:

Glenn Reynolds made an astute comment about Joe’s appearance, which is familiar to all of us who have seen our loved ones fade away:

I’ve also noticed a change in the way he looks. Just a few months ago I was thinking he looked pretty good for a guy his age. Lately I’ve noticed his head is developing that skull-like look you see in the old and the sick.

In addition to talking about Biden's willingness to sell himself to the highest leftist bidder, Tucker Carlson has shown a short montage with just a few of Biden’s most recent departures from reality (beginning at 1:30):



 

The Democrats know exactly how bad Biden is. That means we need to keep a close eye on his running mate because there’s a decent chance that, if the Democrat establishment gets Biden into office, it will then use his declining mental state as a way to get him out of office (the 25^th Amendment), leaving his Veep as the new (and, for Democrats, real) President.

Andrea Widburg

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/with_biden_ascendant_its_useful_to_remember_just_how_awful_he_is.html

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