Impeachment Heist - Joseph Klein

​
by Joseph Klein

The latest effort to undo the 2016 election through crookedness and deceit.

Mass hysteria is gripping the Democrats, their allies in the media, and the other Trump-haters who yearn to use the manufactured Ukrainegate “scandal” to overturn the election of 2016 through impeachment. They don't dare trust the American people to choose their next president a year from now, lest Donald Trump is elected for a second term.

Speaker-in-name only Nancy Pelosi herself has gone off the deep end, claiming without a shred of evidence that “Russia has a hand” in Ukrainegate. Somehow in Nancy Pelosi’s fevered imagination, Ukraine and Russia – two countries literally at each other’s throats – have conspired together in an unholy alliance to help President Trump win the 2020 election. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who went off the deep end long ago with his Russia collusion obsession, made up his own fictional version of the July 25, 2019 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to fit his “mafia shakedown” narrative. In his opening statement at the televised committee hearing Thursday with the U.S. top intelligence officer, acting Department of National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire, Schiff claimed that President Trump asked President Zelensky to “make up dirt” on Mr. Biden. “I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good,” according to the words that Schiff falsely put into President Trump’s mouth. “I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of dirt, on this and on that.” Nothing of the kind actually transpired, of course, according to the most authoritative detailed account of the call that was released last week. Schiff himself was guilty of making up dirt on President Trump, which he later lamely referred to as a parody. That’s the way Schiff rolls.

Committee member Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) condemned Schiff for putting out an “improvised fake dialogue between President Trump and President Zelensky.” Instead, she added, “We should focus on the facts.” But facts do not matter to Trump-hating character assassins like Schiff. Pelosi, now the titular leader of the palace intrigue to depose President Trump through artifice, mimicked Schiff’s lies, also accusing the president of using taxpayer money to “shakedown” a foreign leader for his own personal benefit.

Democrat allies in the media picked up on the same fake mafia boss talking points. CNN and MSNBC paraded their airheads, who parroted these same tiresome lines of attack against the president. The Los Angeles Times published a column entitled “Your lawless president, Mafia Don.”

The fact that Joe Biden did what Pelosi, Schiff and their media flunkeys falsely accuse President Trump of doing is beside the point as far as they are concerned. It was Joe Biden, while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president and assigned as Obama’s point man to manage U.S. relations with Ukraine, who appeared to use taxpayer money as leverage to force the dismissal of the head prosecutor investigating corruption allegations against the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, that was at the same time paying his son Hunter for sitting on the company’s board. Hunter secured this cushy position, for which he had no qualifications, mostly for the purpose of helping to whitewash Burisma’s tainted image. 

Joe Biden has since bragged about the ultimatum he delivered to Ukrainian authorities. “I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars,” Biden boasted. “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. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.” Biden claimed that he acted to rid Ukraine of a corrupt prosecutor. But documentary evidence unearthed by The Hill’s John Solomon points to disinformation intended to undermine the fired prosecutor’s credibility. It mentioned certain individuals associated with Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by folks who had worked in the Clinton administration and were representing Hunter Biden’s employer to help fend off a prosecutorial investigation of the company, who reportedly apologized for the disinformation after the fact. 

Biden’s defenders can claim until the cows come home that the Biden family’s shenanigans in Ukraine were perfectly innocent. But they are hypocrites, as Bill Maher – certainly no fan of President Trump – has pointed out. "This kid was paid $600,000 because his name is Biden by a gas company in Ukraine, this super corrupt country that just had a revolution to get rid of corruption," Maher said. He noted how MSNBC host Rachel Maddow would have been all over the story if Donald Trump, Jr. had done the very same thing.

One problem with the anti-Trump mafia boss narrative perpetuated by President Trump’s enemies is that Ukrainian prosecutors had decided to reopen the investigation into Hunter Biden’s employer more than two months before the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky. Moreover, as the New York Times reported last May, new details had emerged that “show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration. Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.”

The New York Times now tells us to never mind. Moreover, in its infinite unwisdom, the Times quoted Alexander Hamilton completely out of context to support a theory of impeachment against President Trump based on his alleged ties to a foreign country. “When the framers were designing the Constitution and its power of impeachment,” the New York Times lectures us, “one of the high crimes they had in mind was giving into what Hamilton called ‘the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.’” What the “newspaper of record” fails to tell its readers is that Mr. Hamilton was explaining the rationale for the Electoral College, which the Times wants to get rid of, in the Federalist Paper No. 68 entitled “The Mode of Electing the President.”

Ukraine will not "gain an improper ascendant in our councils” simply because Ukraine’s new president, who has vowed to tackle the rampant corruption problem in his country, agreed to do the right thing. President Trump asked President Zelensky to do what  said he wanted to do anyway - investigate both alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton’s benefit and the cover-up of a serious allegation of corruption against a Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son. It was Joe Biden, by threatening to withhold U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine unless the prosecutor looking into his son Hunter’s company was fired, who allegedly sought to “gain an improper ascendant” in Ukraine’s councils.

Finally, Pelosi was peeved, along with her cohorts, that President Trump sought to allegedly “cover up” the details of his July 25^th call with President Zelensky by directing the storage of the memo of the call in a very highly secured server. The whistleblower complaint referred to this as a “lock down.” Both the memo and the whistleblower complaint have been made public – hardly a cover up. They were not destroyed. The call memo was placed in a location that would limit access by would-be leakers to prevent a recurrence of leaks of previous calls between President Trump and foreign leaders that chill candid communications.

Conservative radio host Mark Levin, the author of “Unfreedom of the Press,” put things into proper perspective when he defended President Donald Trump against the whistleblower complaint on Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.” Asked whether the president had done anything illegal, Mark Levin responded: “What crime was violated? It’s not illegal. The question is whether Biden did something illegal. The president didn’t do anything illegal. You know how I know? Because Nancy Pelosi’s been on every tv show and she can’t cite one section of the United States code where it’s illegal. My question is, why is Joe Biden above the law? Why is his son above the law? Where is Hunter Biden today? Where is the media? Don’t they want to know? Don’t they want to know if the leading contender for the Democrat nomination is a crook and if his son is a crook?”

When the Fox News host Ed Henry asked whether Mr. Levin was “OK with a president asking his counterpart — this is a simply yes or no —to dig up dirt on former vice president Joe Biden and his son,” Mr. Levin sharply corrected him. “He doesn’t say I’m digging up dirt on Biden,” Mark Levin said. “He doesn’t say do me a favor and get Biden. He says, ‘Why don’t you talk to my attorney general, look into this. People have questions.’ Wow. And all the sleazy activity that’s going behind the scenes. I want to know. I want to know if Adam Schiff and his staff, working with this phony whistleblower. I want to know who the lawyers are who helped him write that complaint as I was the first to point out before. I want to know the whole activity that’s taking place in the shadows of this government to try and bring down a president of the United States.” As to the alleged “cover up,” Mr. Levin dismissed the charge out of hand. “The president has a power to issue an executive privilege order. Doesn’t matter if he kept it in his pillow. He can still protect that, but he didn’t. He gave it up.”

Nancy Pelosi said that the impeachment inquiry she now supports is “not a cause for any joy that we have to go down this path. It’s a difficult decision to make.” Pelosi was speaking to several hundred Democrats attending the New Jersey Democratic State Committee‘s convention at an Atlantic City casino ballroom. What a bunch of self-righteous nonsense. She is ecstatic at the prospect of bringing the president down. But she is rolling the dice. If the effort fails after acquittal by the Senate and President Trump remains in office, her party will be playing a bad hand in 2020.


Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/mass-impeachment-hysteria-joseph-klein/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Defying the Nazis, Jews celebrated High Holy Days at all costs - Adi Hashmonai

​
by Adi Hashmonai

New exhibition shows how Jews risked their lives to observe their traditions, even in the darkest of times. "For them, it was all about holding on to the known past, the sane past they had before things turned upside down," says archives director in museum.

Jewish men and women pray during Yom Kippur at the Łódź Ghetto | Photo: Archives Department of the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum

A new exhibition at The Ghetto Fighters' House Museum in northern Israel shows how Jewish traditions of the High Holy Days were preserved despite the horrors of the Holocaust.

The new exhibition features photographs, drawings, and various notes. It underscores the degree to which Jews risked their lives to continue their age-old practices during the intense period between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, even as the world around them became hell on earth.

"The way in which people celebrated the High Holy Days was different from place to place. It was a function of whether the people were in ghettos, or in hiding, or in a concentration camp.

"In some cases, we have documents showing that people made an effort to celebrate those festivities right after the war," the museum's director of the Archives Department, Anat Bratman-Elhalel, told Israel Hayom.

"What is striking is the degree to which people went out of their way to keep carrying out the mitzvot, to keep the tradition alive under impossible conditions. For them, it was all about holding on to the known past, the sane past they had before things turned upside down," she said.

One of the photos shows men and women in the Łódź Ghetto on Yom Kippur, at a local synagogue. The photographer, Mendel Grossman, worked at the ghetto's Statistical Department and risked his life so that future generations would see what unfolded. He did not survive the Holocaust.

Unlike ghettos, in concentration camps the High Holy Days could not be celebrated in the open and such activity could lead to death.

But nevertheless, one document clearly shows how people observed Yom Kippur at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The document is the prayer of Kol Nidrei in Yiddish.

"Everything they had was taken from them upon arriving in the camp, and they were definitely not allowed to hold on to scripture or prayer books. If they kept something, they did so in secret and risked their lives," Bratman-Elhalel said."This prayer was written from memory; anyone writing this must have had a great deal of courage to do such a risky thing. It shows the degree to which people were determined to survive and how important prayer was to them."


Adi Hashmonai

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/09/29/defying-the-nazis-jews-celebrated-high-holy-days-at-all-costs/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Blue and White party freezes unity talks - Gary Willig

​
by Gary Willig

Blue and White party calls off meeting with Likud negotiators for tomorrow, claims demands not met.

Gantz campaign launch

Flash 90

The leaders of the negotiating teams for the Blue and White and Likud parties released a statement following the end of the Rosh Hashanah holiday Tuesday evening:
"The Blue and White party has decided that since its demands have not been met, no meeting will be held tomorrow."

The parties could meet again later this week or some time next week.

There are currently no plans for a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader MK Benny Gantz.

The Likud party slammed the Blue and White party's decision.

"We are shocked by the decision of Blue & White to blow up the negotiations and cancel the meetings between Prime Minister Netanyahu and MK Gantz and the preliminary meeting between the negotiating teams scheduled for tomorrow," the Likud stated.

"Blue and White decided to stop the unity negotiations and go to elections - all because Yair Lapid terrorized the unity government because he does not agree to the rotation between Netanyahu and Gantz, but only the rotation between himself and Gantz."

The Blue & Whtie party platform included rotation of the premiership between Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, heads of two of the several parties it includes. Since many voters have doubts about Yair Lapid's suitability for the post, Blue & White avoided mentioning the rotation during most of their campaign.

Gary Willig

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/269612

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Michigan Anti-Christian Adoption Policy Shot Down - T. R. Clancy

​
by T. R. Clancy

Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel's anti-Christian agenda was curtailed by a federal court decision.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Yonker has halted implementation of a new policy in Michigan that forces faith-based adoption agencies to choose between violating their beliefs on same-sex marriage or closing their doors. In his written opinion, Yonker says that the original policy in place for years already “ensures non-discrimination in child placements,” but the new policy “would replace this with a State-orthodoxy test that prevents Catholic believers from participating.”

As readers learned last April, this new policy was the work of Michigan’s renegade attorney general Dana Nessel, who used her authority to settle a pretextual discrimination lawsuit, Dumont v. Gordon, filed by the ACLU on behalf of two lesbian couples targeting Christian agencies. Nessel and the ACLU came up with a settlement agreement requiring all State contracts with private adoption agencies to include a “non-discrimination provision” that prohibits an adoption agency from even referring LGBTQ couples to another agency. Yonker writes that, under the AG’s new rules, a faith-based adoption agency “must choose between its traditional religious belief, and the privilege of continuing to place children with foster and adoptive parents of all types.”

In response, Becket Law brought a lawsuit, Buck vs. Gordon, on behalf of an adopting couple, a former foster child, and St. Vincent Catholic Charities, challenging the new policy and alleging numerous constitutional violations. The lawsuit names state and federal agency heads as defendants, including Attorney General Nessel. The preliminary injunction Yonker granted the plaintiffs last week halts the new policy from going into effect, maintaining the status quo until the case is fully litigated. This means St. Vincent’s current contract with the state, due to expire on September 30, will remain in place. 

Yonker gives particular credit to Nessel for his decision to put the brakes on the Dumont policy -- namely, that it “targets St. Vincent’s religious beliefs.” He explains how Nessel campaigned for AG in 2018 vowing not to defend Michigan’s religious freedom statute, “contending that the only purpose of the statute is discriminatory animus.” Nessel also denounced everyone who supported the statute as “‘hate-mongers’ who disliked gay people more than they cared about children.” In short, “Defendant Nessel made St. Vincent’s belief and practice a campaign issue by calling it hate.” Once in office, Nessel completely reversed the state’s legal position in Dumont, no longer defending against the plaintiffs’ claims or defending the state’s religious freedom statute. Instead, she joined the plaintiffs’ side, rushing to settle the case with the ACLU, which resulted in a settlement agreement that reinterprets Michigan law according to the LGBTQ agenda. “The 2018 campaign for Michigan Attorney General and General Nessel’s statements create a strong inference that the State’s real target is the religious beliefs and confessions of St. Vincent, and not discriminatory conduct.” Nessel’s new policy, writes Yonker, is “a State-orthodoxy test that prevents Catholic believers from participating.”

But Yonker still isn’t finished with Nessel. The state defendants in Buck have asked that Nessel be dismissed as a defendant, because she was acting in her official capacity as counsel for the state in Dumont, and had nothing to do with the state’s new policy. But that doesn’t pass the smell test, and Judge Yonker says Nessel is not going anywhere. Based on the record to date, he says:

Defendant Nessel is at the very heart of the case. She referred to proponents of the 2015 law as “hate-mongers” and said the only purpose of the 2015 law was “discriminatory animus.” She described the 2015 law as “indefensible” during her campaign. These statements raise a strong inference of a hostility toward a religious viewpoint. Based on the present record, she was also a pivotal player in the State’s total reversal of position in the Dumont litigation.

ACLU staff attorney Jay Kaplan is trying to downplay the significance of Nessel’s undeniably anti-religious remarks, telling the Detroit News that “[t]he judge’s opinion failed to note that some of those comments were made by Nessel in her capacity as a private citizen and others were taken out of context.” 

True, Nessel was still a private citizen when she attacked the 2015 religious freedom statute. She was still a private citizen when, during her campaign for the office of Attorney General, she vowed she would never defend the religious freedom law because it was “indefensible” and its only purpose was “discriminatory animus.” But the “context” of Nessel’s remarks is her unceasing LGBT activism, and its relevance is that she’s still practicing that activism as attorney general. 

Judge Yonker’s preliminary injunction isn’t the end of the Buck lawsuit by a long shot. But there’s room for optimism, because injunctions are only granted when a judge is persuaded that, among other things, “the movant has a strong likelihood of success on the merits” of the underlying litigation. Yonker thinks St. Vincent has a strong likelihood of success, drawing a detailed picture of how the state, under Nessel’s counsel, targeted St. Vincent for their religious beliefs. Regardless that “St. Vincent has never prevented a same-sex couple from fostering or adopting a child” -- and that St. Vincent does a great deal that directly benefits same-sex couples -- “[t]he State is willing to prevent St. Vincent from doing all this in the future simply because St. Vincent adheres to its sincerely held religious belief that marriage is an institution created by God to join a single man to a single woman.” The state’s unnecessary new policy will never withstand the strict-scrutiny standard, since it “strongly suggests the state’s real goal is not to promote non-discriminatory child placements, but to stamp out St. Vincent’s religious belief and replace it with the State’s own.”

Dana Nessel would love to stamp out all Christian beliefs and replace them with her own. She’s already on record that she won’t enforce the state’s abortion ban if Roe v. Wade is overturned -- and she was Michigan’ attorney general when she said that. We already saw what happened when she tried to create a Stasi unit to investigate “hate crime incidents.” She recently found a statute authorizing improvements on a vital underwater energy pipeline unconstitutional, on the rickety ground that the content of the statute isn’t adequately reflected in its title. It’s only a marvelous coincidence that long before she was elected she was already demanding the pipeline be shut down. She doesn’t seem to care about any law passed by the Michigan Legislature that she doesn’t like, and she seems unacquainted with large sections of the Bill of Rights. Nessel is more interested in practicing lawfare than the law.

Let’s hope Judge Yonker is right, and St. Vincent wins their lawsuit. But for now, it’s enough to see a clearly written legal opinion that spells out what so many of us in Michigan already know: that our attorney general is a radical leftist and a religious bigot, willing to abuse her office to impose her private agenda if she can get away with it. 

T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at trclancy@yahoo.com

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/michigan_antichristian_adoption_policy_shot_down.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

China in the Middle East: Reshaping Regional Politics - Ilan Berman

​
by Ilan Berman

[T]he proliferation of Chinese political and economic influence also increasingly threatens to upend longstanding regional security arrangements and fragment solidarity in the Islamic world.

China has well and truly arrived in the Middle East. After years of relative passivity, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is now making a concerted effort to expand its strategic presence and economic clout in the region.

For Middle East nations, Beijing's newfound drive for regional prominence is one of the most consequential—albeit least reported—trends of recent years. It holds the power to reshape regional markets as local governments increasingly reorient their economies to take advantage of Chinese outreach and largesse. But the proliferation of Chinese political and economic influence also increasingly threatens to upend longstanding regional security arrangements and fragment solidarity in the Islamic world. The spread of China's model of technologically-empowered censorship, meanwhile, carries with it the potential to reinforce some of the worst political impulses of the region's autocrats.

Expanding Outreach

China's invigorated regional agenda is as significant as it is sudden. Just a few years ago, Chinese engagement with the Middle East could be said to be confined to just two priorities. The first was the sale of arms to weapons-hungry client states in the region, most conspicuously the Islamic Republic of Iran.[1] The second was the acquisition of regional energy resources to fuel the ongoing expansion of the Chinese economy.[2]

No longer. The last several years have witnessed an explosion of Chinese interest in and involvement with the region.

Reuven Rivlin (right), president of Israel, meets with Chinese vice president Wang Qishan, Jerusalem, October 2018. The longstanding strategic ties between Jerusalem and Washington are being directly—and adversely—impacted by China's deepening economic presence in the Jewish state.

Politically, this has been reflected in a spate of high-level contacts between Chinese leaders and regional heads of state. Perhaps the most visible of these was King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud's 2017 visit to Beijing, during which the Saudi monarch inked a memorandum of understanding with Chinese president Xi Jinping to explore a staggering US$65 billion in joint ventures.[3] Equally significant were President's Xi's 2016 visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt, and his subsequent jaunt to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last year, all of which were intended to reinforce to regional rulers that the Middle East is increasingly important in the calculus of China's leaders.

Economically, too, China's regional presence is growing by leaps and bounds. A decade ago, the Middle East as a whole received just $1 billion in total Chinese annual investment.[4] Today, that figure is exponentially higher. At last summer's Ministerial Meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in Beijing, Chinese officials pledged a massive $23 billion in loans and development aid to the countries of the region.[5] China is now deeply involved in numerous construction and infrastructure projects around the region, from Kuwait's planned "Silk City"[6] to Oman's port of Duqm.[7]

Militarily, China has moved from being a marginal player to an important participant in regional security.

Militarily, China has moved from being a marginal player to an increasingly important participant in regional security. Since 2015, when it opened its first regional base to combat piracy in the African nation of Djibouti,[8] Beijing has worked diligently to expand its military posture throughout the Middle East and North Africa. This has included frequent port visits by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in the southern Persian Gulf and an extended deployment of Chinese military vessels to the Gulf of Aden.[9] China has also broadened its peacekeeping presence in the region and has become the second largest financial contributor (after the United States) to U.N. peacekeeping operations.[10] That, however, might be just the beginning: In its latest annual report to Congress on China's military power, the Pentagon warned that Beijing could soon parlay these overtures into the creation of military bases throughout the region.[11]

These investments are undergirded by an increasingly expansive Chinese view of national security—one that necessitates proactive military engagement in the Middle East on the part of the PRC. Beijing's 2015 National Military Strategy outlines the need

to tackle all kinds of contingencies and military threats against its national territorial integrity and space and maritime sovereignty; to resolutely support national reunification; to maintain the nation's new forms of security and interests and preserve the safety of overseas interests; to keep up strategic deterrence and prepare for nuclear counterstrikes; to participate in regional and international security cooperation for regional and world peace; to strengthen its anti-penetration, anti-secession, and anti-terror efforts; to safe-guard national political security and social stability; to participate in disaster relief; to safeguard the rights and interests of the Chinese people; and to support national economic and social development.[12]

Understanding Chinese Interests

What fuels the PRC's contemporary focus on the Middle East? The answers are both practical and ideological.

Concretely, the Middle East is more essential than ever for China's continued prosperity: China's energy consumption is soaring, and more and more of its energy is coming from the Middle East. The country's imports of crude oil, which account for more than 50 percent of total Chinese energy usage, jumped from nearly 6.2 million tons in 2014 to more than 9.25 million tons last year,[13] and nearly 40 percent of that total now originates in the Middle East.[14]

Chinese officials see the Middle East as an intrinsic part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

That dependency, moreover, is deepening. Middle East suppliers including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman are among the fastest-growing sources of energy for China[15] and can be expected to account for an even larger share of total Chinese oil imports in the years ahead. The Middle East, in other words, is quickly becoming a key engine of Chinese economic growth.

Just as significant, however, has been the reorientation of Chinese foreign policy that has taken place in recent years under the guidance of President Xi. This shift has dramatically expanded China's international engagement and strategic interests as part of an increasingly aggressive, expansionist foreign policy.

Beijing today can be said to have abandoned Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's famous dictum that China should "keep a low profile" in favor of a larger role on the world stage. This has entailed a shift in attitudes toward regions like the Middle East. As Joshua Eisenman of the American Foreign Policy Council has noted, developing states—including the countries of the Middle East and North Africa—"are assuming a larger role in China's thinking in both political and economic affairs."[16]

This view dovetails with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the sprawling framework of trade and commercial ties between China and various world regions that has become Beijing's signature foreign initiative since its formal launch in 2013. Chinese officials have made clear that they see the Middle East as an intrinsic part of the BRI[17] and have ramped up their investments in the region accordingly.

Dangerous Byproducts

China's deepening involvement carries tremendous consequences for the countries of the Middle East. Slowly but surely, Beijing's growing financial and strategic footprint is beginning to alter politics and security in the region in at least three discernable areas.

The first is the longstanding strategic ties between Jerusalem and Washington, which are being directly—and adversely—impacted by China's deepening economic presence in the Jewish state. Over the past decade, Israel has worked diligently to broaden its global appeal as a "startup nation" in technology and innovation to attract foreign direct investment on a large scale. This effort has proven extremely successful. In 2016, Israel's high-tech sector raised $4.83 billion in foreign direct investment. In 2017, that figure rose to $5.24 billion. And as of mid-2018, Israel's tech industry had drawn in more than $3.2 billion for that year—greater than the total capital raised by the industry between 2010 and 2013.[18]

While much of this investment has historically come from the United States and Europe, a growing share is Chinese in origin. Over the past several years, Beijing has positioned itself as a key stakeholder in the so-called "Silicon Wadi," inking cooperative agreements and acquiring Israeli companies in deals cumulatively worth hundreds of millions of dollars.[19] Informed estimates now suggest that China is on track to overtake the United States as Israel's single largest overall source of investment in the near future.[20]

In 2015, the Chinese Shanghai International Port Group signed a multi- billion dollar deal with Jerusalem for future rights to operate the Haifa port, which hosts visits from the U.S. Sixth Fleet and joint drills between the U.S. and Israeli navies. U.S. military officials have concerns over potential Chinese intelligence operations at the port.

Yet as China's stake in Israel has grown, so too has its potential impact on Israel's most vibrant and enduring alliance: its strategic partnership with the United States. Today, officials in Washington are increasingly alarmed over China's growing penetration of Israel's high tech sector. After years of systematic investments, they say, the Chinese now directly control, or have influence over, as much as one-quarter of Israel's total tech industry, including defense contractors at work on sensitive projects jointly being developed with the United States.[21] They also intimate that, unless it is properly regulated by the Israeli government, China's growing stake in the country could end up adversely affecting joint projects between the two countries. No less senior an official than U.S. national security advisor John Bolton personally delivered this message when he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials for consultations in Jerusalem in early 2019.[22]

But China's investments threaten the U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership in other ways as well. In 2015, a Chinese conglomerate known as the Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) signed a multi-billion dollar deal with the Israeli transportation ministry for the future rights to operate the Haifa port.[23] Under the terms of the agreement, SIPG will take control of day-to-day operations at the port for the span of a quarter-century beginning in 2021 when the current process of modernization and construction of the facilities is completed. The agreement was controversial from the outset because Haifa is more than simply a commercial hub; it also represents a fixture in the long-running U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership, regularly hosting naval visits from the U.S. Sixth Fleet and joint drills between the U.S. and Israeli navies. This has made the question of who operates the port a key concern for Washington, with U.S. military officials warning with growing frequency that port visits could end, or at least lessen, once China assumes control of the facility in 2021 due to concerns over potential Chinese intelligence operations.[24]

Worrisome, too, is the absence of sufficient safeguards by which the Israeli government might regulate China's deepening presence in Israel. Because Jerusalem currently lacks formal institutions (like the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS) to vet and oversee foreign investments in sensitive national sectors, officials in Washington worry that Beijing's activities are not at present being properly scrutinized or controlled.[25]

The potential ramifications are profound. China's growing stake in Israel represents a double-edged sword for the Jewish state—one that, if not properly regulated and overseen to Washington's satisfaction, could adversely affect the vibrancy of its strategic partnership with the United States, and even curtail future cooperation between the two countries.

Police respond to a protest by Uighurs in China's Xinjiang region, 2016. Beijing has launched a campaign to pacify the Uighur Muslim minority in its western province. Muslim nations have remained silent, worried that criticism of the Chinese policy might upset their extensive economic and trade ties with Beijing.

China's outreach to the Middle East has also had the effect of muting regional attitudes toward the PRC's own domestic practices—in particular the officially-sanctioned repression of its Muslim population. Over the past three years, Beijing has launched an extensive campaign aimed at pacifying the Uighur Muslim minority in its western province of Xinjiang, which Chinese officials see as particularly prone to radicalization. The tactics employed by Beijing include pervasive monitoring, curbs on Islamic traditions, and the mass detention of one million or more citizens in the equivalent of "reeducation" camps.[26] Via these measures, the Chinese state is attempting to repress and erase the Muslim traditions and culture of its westernmost province in a process that Chinese officials have called "harmonization" but which international observers have equated with ethnic cleansing.

One would expect this offensive to garner outrage among the world's majority-Muslim nations, which historically have had a deep stake and vested interest in the well-being of co-religionists abroad. That, however, has not happened. With only a handful of notable exceptions,[27] Muslim nations have remained silent, worried that any criticism of Chinese policy in Xinjiang might upset their extensive economic and trade ties to the PRC. Indeed, when the region's most influential leaders have chosen to weigh in on China's anti-Muslim offensive, they have done so in support of Beijing, rather than in opposition to it. Thus, in February 2019, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly argued in favor of the PRC's right to carry out "anti-terrorism" and "de-extremism" measures—an explicit endorsement of China's Xinjiang campaign.[28] Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan similarly soft-pedaled China's Xinjiang detention centers during a summer 2019 visit to Beijing, saying it was possible to "find a solution to this issue that takes into consideration the sensitivities of both sides."[29] This muted criticism of Chinese policies in Xinjiang likely has a great deal to do with a recent surge of Chinese investment directed at Ankara, which comes at a time of significant Turkish economic turmoil.[30]

Middle East governments have signaled that the PRC's domestic policies are off limits so long as the price is right.

The result is tantamount to an abandonment of China's Muslims by their Middle East co-religionists for economic reasons. The signal sent to Beijing is that the PRC's domestic policies, no matter how repressive, will be considered off limits for criticism or inspection so long as the price is right. That, in turn, is likely to fuel further Beijing's current offensive of forcing assimilation and subservience among its Muslim minority by any means necessary.

Arguably the most profound effect of China's expanding presence in the Middle East, however, has been its adverse impact on governance throughout the region. Today, the digitally enabled authoritarianism that China's government has used to great effect to reshape its own society in a more rigid, censored, and compliant direction has begun to proliferate in the countries of the Middle East (in much the same way as it already has in other parts of the world, such as Latin America).[31]

Most blatantly, Chinese companies have long helped Iran's clerical regime to repress its own people. Following 2009's Green Revolution, for example, Tehran turned to Chinese telecom giant ZTE to provide sophisticated surveillance technology for domestic applications—assistance that has aided the efforts of Iran's rulers to censor, curtail, and monitor the communications of the country's captive population in the years since.[32] Another Chinese tech conglomerate, Huawei, has also been identified by the U.S. government as engaging in such questionable commerce with Iran and doing so in violation of U.S. sanctions.[33]

Nor is Iran an isolated case. Egypt has similarly allowed the PRC to obtain a major stake in its communications sector and to disseminate technologies that have strengthened President Abdel Fatah Sisi's grip on power at the expense of freedom of expression there. Thanks to Chinese assistance, Egypt is now the only other country in the world that has adopted all nine of the "key internet controls" outlined by freedom watchdog Freedom House: the blocking of platforms and content; the deliberate disruption of communications; manipulation of online discussion; the passage of new laws or directives tightening controls; the arrest, imprisonment, prolonged detention, or physical attack or harm as retaliation for political or social content; and the execution of technical attacks against critics or rights organizations.[34]

Chinese firms are busy marketing biometric surveillance systems throughout the Persian Gulf.

Other regional states could soon head in the same direction. Officials in Lebanon, where China has been entrenched for half-a-decade developing the national telecom sector, are today actively courting greater Chinese investment and involvement with all that this portends.[35] Simultaneously, Chinese firms like Huawei and Hikvision are busy marketing biometric surveillance systems throughout the Persian Gulf where they are meeting with tremendous commercial success.[36]

These trends heighten fears that China's tech giants will inevitably help to empower and improve the repressive practices of the region's autocrats. For, as China's engagement with the region expands, so too will the availability of the means by which Beijing has managed to so successfully control and manipulate its own population.[37] The "China model" of social control could thus easily become an export commodity in Beijing's dealings with the Middle East—much to the detriment of prospects for pluralism and democracy in the region.

Beyond Economics

None of these trends are formally acknowledged by China's leaders, of course. To the contrary, officials in Beijing have taken pains to stress that their country's deepening involvement in the Middle East is focused solely on development, rather than on reshaping regional politics. Indeed, in his 2016 address to the Arab League, President Xi himself explicitly emphasized that his government was not attempting to carve out a "sphere of influence" in the Middle East.[38] And at first blush, China's regional involvement does indeed seem to be nothing more than, as some observers have put it, to "speak softly and carry a large purse."[39]

Upon closer examination, however, it is abundantly clear that, in spite of Beijing's assurances, China's regional involvement is far from benign. Instead, it holds the power to alter alliances, political discourse, and even domestic freedoms throughout the region—and to do so in ways that will profoundly impact the region itself as well as its relationship with the world in the years ahead.

Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

---

[1] Dan Blumenthal, "China and the Middle East: Providing Arms," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 11-19.
[2] Jin Liangxiang, "China and the Middle East: Energy First," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 3-10.
[3] Reuters, Mar. 6, 2017.
[4] The Economist (London), Apr. 20, 2019.
[5] South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 10, 2018.
[6] Arabian Business (Dubai), Nov. 24, 2018.
[7] Reuters, Sept. 5, 2017.
[8] The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2015.
[9] Sun Degang, "China's Soft Military Presence in the Middle East," Dirasat, King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh, Jan. 2018, p. 10.
[10] Ibid, p. 12.
[11] The Guardian (London), May 2, 2019.
[12] "The White Paper of China's Military Strategy, 2015," Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, cited in Sun Degang, "China's Soft Military Presence in the Middle East."
[13] "China Crude Oil: Imports," CEIC Data, Hong Kong.
[14] Daniel Workman, "Top 15 Crude Oil Suppliers to China," World's Top Exports, June 7, 2019.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Joshua Eisenman, "BRI in Context: China's Geostrategic Conception of the Developing World," Global Asia, June 2019.
[17] Xi Jinping, speech to League of Arab States, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, Jan. 22, 2016.
[18] Times of Israel (Jerusalem), July 24, 2018.
[19] Reuters, Sept. 11, 2017; Forbes (New York), May 30, 2018.
[20] See, for example, EJIInsight (Hong Kong), Feb. 1, 2018.
[21] Author interviews with U.S. National Security Council officials, Washington, D.C., Nov. 2018.
[22] The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 9, 2019.
[23] Angela Yu, "Chinese port operator signs deal to run Israel's Haifa port," Journal of Commerce (Newark), June 2, 2015.
[24] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 15, 2018.
[25] Author interviews with U.S. National Security Council officials, Washington, D.C., Nov. 2018.
[26] See, for example, "An Internment Camp for 10 Million Uighurs," Meduza (Riga, Lat.), Oct. 1, 2018.
[27] See, for example, CNN, Feb. 10, 2019.
[28] Al-Jazeera (Doha), Feb. 23, 2019.
[29] CNN, July 5, 2019.
[30] Daily Sabah (Istanbul), June 30, 2019.


Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/59279/ilan-berman-china-in-the-middle-east?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=6fe0ecd585-MEQ_Berman_2019_10_01_03_52

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter