The Arab Apartheid No One Talks About - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

What is clear...is that the international community has long been ignoring the abuses and human rights violations by an Arab country against the Palestinians.

• "Not all of the professions will be opened to Palestinians under the new decree...." — L'Orient Today, December 8, 2021.

• Palestinian refugees in Lebanon "are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon's public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work and right to own property." — UNRWA, September 2020.

• There are several reasons why the Lebanese do not want the Palestinians. One reason is that since the 1970s, the Palestinians have brought war and destruction to Lebanon and turned refugee camps into bases for terror groups.

• "It is time to end this history of discrimination and systematic segregation... Qualified Palestinians should be allowed to practice their professions, especially in fields where they are most needed.... Very few Lebanese would share my view." — Sawssan Abou-Zahr, senior Lebanese journalist, Reliefweb, August 1, 2021.

• What is clear...is that the international community has long been ignoring the abuses and human rights violations by an Arab country against the Palestinians.

• The demonization of Israel by so many journalists, officials and so-called human-rights groups leaves little time to ask why a Palestinian in Lebanon is not permitted to practice medicine while a significant portion of the medical staff at Israeli hospitals consists of Arab doctors and nurses.

The international community has long been ignoring the abuses and human rights violations by Lebanon against the Palestinians. There are several reasons why the Lebanese do not want the Palestinians. One reason is that since the 1970s, the Palestinians have brought war and destruction to Lebanon and turned refugee camps into bases for terror groups. Pictured: Palestinians in Ain el-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, protest on January 31, 2020. (Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images)

The issue of Arab apartheid and discrimination recently resurfaced after a Lebanese minister announced that his country decided to allow Palestinians to work in several sectors that were until now reserved just for Lebanese nationals.

The announcement by Mostafa Bayram, Lebanon's Minister of Labor, came as a surprise to many Palestinians who have been banned for the past four decades from working in many professions.

Palestinians are hoping that the decision would end decades of discrimination and marginalization by an Arab country -- Lebanon.

Some Lebanese, however, expressed fierce opposition to Bayram's decision to ease the labor restrictions imposed on the Palestinians. These Lebanese seem afraid that the Palestinians will either take their jobs or become full citizens of Lebanon.

On December 8, Bayram, who is affiliated with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group, published a decree allowing Palestinians to work in trade-union-regulated professions.

The decree states that Palestinians born on Lebanese territory and officially registered with the Ministry of Interior may work in professions requiring union membership from which they had previously been barred.

These union-regulated jobs include professions such as medicine, law, and engineering, as well as public transport and tourism-related jobs.

This does not mean, however, that Lebanon has decided completely to end discriminatory measures against Palestinians.

"Not all of the professions will be opened to Palestinians under the new decree, as some require legal changes or changes to the unions' bylaws in order for non-Lebanese workers to be allowed into the field," according to L'Orient Today, which describes itself as an independent platform that aims to examine the failures of the Lebanese system.

"The history of Palestinian refugees' interactions with restrictive employment policies in Lebanon dates back to the period preceding the Lebanese Civil War," according to a study of Palestinian employment in Lebanon.

The study noted that the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs proposed in 1964 to regulate the participation of foreigners in the Lebanese labor market. Consequently, the Palestinians were classified as foreigners and required to obtain a work permit.

In 1982, the Lebanese authorities further restricted the list of professions open to Palestinians. They were barred from working in 70 commercial and administrative professions.

The study also noted that the restrictions were lifted slightly in 1995, with the introduction of a new amendment to the ministerial decree. It exempted from these restrictions foreigners who were born in Lebanon, born to Lebanese mothers or married to Lebanese women.

According to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA):

"[Palestine refugees in Lebanon] are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon's public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work and right to own property."

UNRWA noted in addition that Palestinian refugees are still prohibited from practicing 39 professions, mainly due to a precondition that requires them to hold Lebanese nationality and obtain a work permit. The professions include the sectors of healthcare, law, transportation, engineering and tourism.

The latest decree by the Lebanese Minister of Labor was received with mixed feelings.

While some Palestinians and Lebanese welcomed it as a positive step towards ending the discrimination and apartheid, others said it was insufficient and did not provide clear mechanisms for enforcement. According to senior PLO official Ahmad Tamimi:

"The decree represents an important turning point in the lives of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, as it constitutes an end to their hardship and a significant development in changing their human conditions towards a decent life and a normal life."

Tamimi also said that the Lebanese decision "had a positive impact on the hearts of the Palestinians in general and the refugees in Lebanon in particular."

Critics, however, are less enthusiastic about the prospects of ending the system of apartheid and discrimination in Lebanon.

"Like everyone else, I am critical and wary of this decision," wrote a social media user called Islam-#GoldStrike.

"One of its very first and major flaws is that it is a decision made by the minister himself so it is tied to him being in this position, meaning it can be easily revoked by the next minister."

Some Lebanese seem especially worried that the Palestinians will take over the jobs of Lebanese citizens in a country where the rate of unemployment is estimated at more than 40%.

These Lebanese appear worried that the decision would pave the way for the permanent settlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon. There are several reasons why the Lebanese do not want the Palestinians.

One reason is that since the 1970s, the Palestinians have brought war and destruction to Lebanon and turned refugee camps into bases for terror groups.

The Lebanese are afraid that the continued presence of the Palestinians in Lebanon would have economic and demographic implications on Lebanon. They argue that Lebanon is facing an acute economic crisis and cannot afford to absorb non-Lebanese nationals, including the Palestinians, who are already living in harsh conditions in several refugee camps.

The Lebanese are also afraid of tawteen ("resettlement"). Some suspect that there are Arabs and other international parties, who would like to see Lebanon become a homeland for the Palestinians. That is why these Lebanese regard the Palestinians as "foreigners."

The Lebanese, in short, are saying that the Palestinians are not welcome to stay in Lebanon.

The heads of Lebanon's physicians' and pharmacists' unions, who opposed the easing of restrictions imposed on the Palestinians, expressed "shock" over the minister's decision.

They pointed out that the laws of their unions state that no doctor has the right to practice medicine on Lebanese territory until he or she is accepted as a member of the unions.

Lebanon's Kataeb Party, a Christian political party, warned that the decision to allow Palestinians to work in several sectors would have grave repercussions on the political and economic situation in Lebanon:

"Opening the door for refugees in Lebanon to practice dozens of professions is an assault on the right of the Lebanese, and a consolidation of their permanent presence in Lebanon while the Lebanese are emigrating... This step will contribute to reducing the salaries in the mentioned professions in line with the supply and demand market. It will also require institutions and employers to register [Palestinian] employees for social security, which will accumulate unbearable burdens that will lead to bankruptcy."

The Lebanese Party also warned that the decision has "hidden and malicious intentions," such as permanently settling Palestinians in Lebanon.

Despite these clear anti-Palestinian views by Arabs, there are nevertheless some Lebanese who are not afraid to express their shame over Lebanon's mistreatment of, and discriminatory measures against, the Palestinians.

"It is time to end this history of discrimination and systematic segregation," wrote senior Lebanese journalist Sawssan Abou-Zahr.

"Qualified Palestinians should be allowed to practice their professions, especially in fields where they are most needed. I dare to say it is time to grant Palestinians some kind of representation at municipalities at the very least. Very few Lebanese would share my view. Some might accuse me of treason; a large number would refuse considering this suggestion, either out of racism or fear that improving the living conditions of refugees is the equivalent of permanently settling them in the country."

It is not clear at this stage if the Hezbollah-affiliated minister's decision will indeed end Lebanon's long-standing apartheid policies and laws against Palestinians. What is clear, however, is that the international community has long been ignoring the abuses and human rights violations by an Arab country against the Palestinians.

Journalists covering the Middle East generally ignore the plight of the Palestinians in the Arab countries, including Lebanon. For them, Lebanon's actions and policies against the Palestinians is not newsworthy.

The demonization of Israel by so many journalists, officials and so-called human-rights groups leaves little time to ask why a Palestinian in Lebanon is not permitted to practice medicine while a significant portion of the medical staff at Israeli hospitals consists of Arab doctors and nurses.

Imagine the uproar that would have erupted at UN institutions or university campuses in the US or Canada had such measures been taken by Israel. Yet when an Arab country subjects Palestinians to deep-seated discrimination and violates their basic human rights, the only sound you can hear is a deadly silence.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18026/arab-apartheid

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Xi Makes His Move - Ari Lieberman

 

by Ari Lieberman

As Biden flounders.

 

The confused and haphazard U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August on Biden’s orders has had far-reaching consequences well beyond the borders of that primitive country and the confines of the Middle East. The wisdom of the retreat is debatable but what is not up for debate is the way it was carried out, which evoked memories of America’s disorderly flight from Saigon in 1975.

China, under the leadership of its “President for Life,” Xi Jinping, is attempting to assert itself as the world’s dominant superpower. Their economic might is second only to the America’s. They have the largest naval surface fleet (with two aircraft carriers and a third under construction) and largest standing army in the world, and third largest air force. Backed by this political and military might, the Chinese are, with ever increasing belligerency, threatening their bordering neighbors, and flexing their muscles in the South and East China Seas.

Xi and his advisers have been carefully scrutinizing Biden’s foreign policies and its safe to assume that they are largely unimpressed by administration’s fecklessness.  The abandonment of Afghanistan is but one example. Iran is another. The Biden administration has been desperately trying to get the Iranians to re-enter the JCPOA and the desperation is palpable. The Iranians for their part are slow walking the process while they continue to enrich uranium and advance their WMD project. In Ukraine’s Donbas region, the Russians have been waging a proxy war in an effort to undermine Ukraine’s democratically elected government. They’ve also massed 75,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders to exert further pressure. Aside from offering platitudes, the Biden administration seems incapable of responding.

China currently maintains at least 17 separate land and maritime disputes with its neighbors and has shown a demonstrable propensity toward military aggression. Shortly after the Communist takeover of China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army invaded and conquered Tibet. In 1962, the PLA invaded India in Ladakh, and across the McMahon Line in the then North-East Frontier Agency (also referred to as Arunachal Pradesh). In 1969, PLA troops attacked and ambushed a Soviet force garrisoned at Damansky Island, a small remote Island in Russia’s southeast that marked the border between China and the Soviet Union. That attack nearly sparked nuclear conflagration. And in 1979, the PLA invaded Vietnam, sparking a war that resulted in 125,000 dead and wounded cumulatively.

The Soviet Union, India and Vietnam were all ostensibly brotherly allies of China, yet China had no qualms about resorting to military aggression to unilaterally enforce its dictates. China is now turning the bulk of its attention to the South China Sea and Taiwan. China claims nearly the entire South China Sea as within its Exclusive Economic Zone, a view that is contrary to well-established international maritime law.

To secure its claim, China has been aggressively patrolling this area with its large naval fleet and pillaging it with its vast fishing fleet. Utilizing sand dredgers, China has also constructed several artificial “islands” in the South China Sea, some of which have been militarized with radars, anti-aircraft batteries and airfields capable of accommodating military aircraft. The construction of these Islands has caused untold environmental damage to surrounding maritime life, but the Chinese don’t seem too bothered by this.

The South China Sea is important for several reasons. First, one-third of the world’s maritime traffic travels through it. Second, it contains 12 percent of the world’s fish catch. Third, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the South China Sea holds about 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Lastly, America’s maritime link from its west coast to India and the Mideast runs directly through the South China Sea.

China has also trained its sights on Taiwan, a democratic, strategically placed Island nation of 24 million, which China claims as a province. Most of the island’s inhabitants consider themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese and prefer closer political, economic, and military ties with the U.S. and the West rather than China.

Xi has not minced words in his dealings with Taiwan. He has stated unequivocally that use of force to conquer the island is an option, though he prefers peaceful reunification. In October, China's top legislature rubberstamped a law designed to give Xi the legal imprimatur to utilize all forms of aggression, including military aggression, to secure land and maritime rights that China claims. The law stipulates that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the People's Republic of China are sacred and inviolable.”

In the meantime, China is currently engaged in a hybrid war of sorts against Taiwan employing various schemes to grind down the country’s resolve, morale, and capabilities. Chinese military aircraft – bombers and fighter-bombers – routinely enter Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) forcing Taiwanese fighters to intercept. Chinese sand dredgers are systematically dredging sand off the seabed floor near Taiwan’s outlier islands, destroying fishing resources and causing irreparable environmental harm. China is also employing its diplomatic and economic prowess to isolate Taiwan.

The initiative is currently with China, which has a range of options at its disposal. Reuters has mapped out six frighteningly realistic scenarios that could unfold in a Chinese bid to secure its objectives. These range from so-called gray-zone, non-kinetic warfare to full-scale war involving ballistic missile strikes against U.S. bases in Guam and Okinawa coupled with airborne and amphibious assaults against Taiwan.

Should Taiwan succumb to China’s will, the result would be calamitous for the U.S., the region, and the world. It would give China a foothold in the so-called first island chain, which would severely undermine America’s ability to defend its regional allies – Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. It would also immeasurably strengthen China’s hand in the South China Sea.

Moreover, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would give China access to Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves, rated as the world’s fifth largest. In addition, it would instantly give China a stranglehold over the world’s microchip market as Taiwan is the world’s premier manufacturer of microchips, which go into everything from cars to appliances. What we are witnessing today in terms of chip supply shortages is nothing compared to what would happen if China grabbed control of this important industry.

The main impediment to an all-out Chinese invasion of Taiwan is America’s deterrent power, but that deterrence is rapidly diminishing. What has the Biden administration done to bolster America’s standing on the international stage? Sadly, the answer is nothing. In fact, the administration has met international challenges and adversities with fecklessness, vacillation and desperation. From Afghanistan and Iran to Ukraine and Venezuela, the Biden administration is acting like a deer in headlights, unable to respond or react, let alone being proactive.

Moreover, while China’s military expands at an unprecedented rate and its professional cadre of dedicated hackers steal Western military technology, America’s defense spending, when taking into account inflation, has actually shrunk. Equally troubling is the administration’s skewed defense priorities. Valuable resources are being diverted to combat climate change instead of meeting real, clear and present dangers.

China regards America as its main antagonist for regional dominance. It has constructed mock-ups of U.S. navy aircraft carriers and destroyers, created for the sole purpose of target practice and identification, leaving little doubt about China’s nefarious intentions.

Many experts believe that some form of major Chinese aggression against Taiwan is likely within the next decade. Some believe it will take place in 2027 to coincide with the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the PLA. Others have argued that it could take place even sooner than that.

History has taught us that when bullies are confronted, they often back down. When they are allowed to act with impunity, they grow bolder as Nazi Germany did after Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia at Munich. What Joe Biden does now will determine China’s trajectory. A resolute and unequivocal commitment to Taiwan’s sovereignty, coupled with increased defense spending and a tougher line toward those who wish to undermine America’s interests will make China think twice about embarking on a reckless adventure; one that could lead to a global war and nuclear conflagration.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration has failed miserably in this geopolitical test of leadership. Like his mentor Barack Obama, Joe Biden has demonstrated a penchant for abandoning allies and emboldening enemies, making the world a lot less safe.  

 

Ari Lieberman

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/xi-makes-his-move-ari-lieberman/

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Poll shows strong public opposition to Biden's plan to spend $80 billion to hire almost 87,000 new IRS agents and vastly increase audits - Thomas Lifson

 

by Thomas Lifson

According to a new HarrisX poll, 58% of likely voters said they think increased enforcement would impact middle class taxpayers the most; 23% said it would only impact the wealthy.

Thank goodness the public understands at least some of the horror that would be unleashed on us if Biden's Build Back Bankrupt plan were to become law.  One of the worst features of the bill is that it would sic hordes of new and inexperienced IRS auditors on middle America, not the billionaires that Democrat propaganda would have believe are going to be forced to "pay their fair share."

These new agents would be under pressure to prove their worth by shaking down businesses that have done their best to comply with the complex and often difficult to understand IRS regulations, many of which are subject to interpretation.  The burden of an audit is considerable.  I've been audited twice and had to pay not a single penny as a result, but the cost in terms of stress and time was considerable.

Bethany Blankely of Just the News explains an encouraging poll and some of the worrisome aspects of the BBB bill:

According to a new HarrisX poll, 58% of likely voters said they think increased enforcement would impact middle class taxpayers the most; 23% said it would only impact the wealthy.

Their inclination appears to be accurate, according to the House version of the bill. Half of the expected 1.2 million new audits would target households earning less than $75,000.

The extra funding is aimed at enforcement, not helping Americans deal with the maddeningly complex tax code:

The majority of the proposed funding — $44.9 billion — would go toward IRS enforcement compared to $1.93 billion to help taxpayers with services like pre-filing assistance and education, filing and account services, and taxpayer advocacy.

While large corporations employ a staff of lawyers and accountants who help lower their tax responsibilities, most small businesses don't. Because the IRS already audits large corporations, new agents would likely focus on small businesses that depend on cash transactions, CNBC reports.

Such small business include restaurants, hair salons, and other retail small businesses that have been devastated by COVID lockdowns in many states.  Their owners struggle to keep their businesses alive, and when faced with the time demands of an audit, their ability to keep running may be harmed.  I know that when tips in restaurants are audited, the IRS assesses what it thinks the amount should be, and it is up to the target to prove otherwise.

Note also that small business–owners are one of the key components of the Republican base.  Damaging them helps the Democrats.

The article includes a lot of information on IRS mismanagement and inability to fill vacant positions that already are funded:

A 2020 National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress showed the IRS hadn't hired over 5,000 full time employees for which it had the funding because of disorganization, incompetence, and labor union rules promoting "needless bureaucracy."

And in 2017, the Treasury Inspector General found that the IRS rehired more than 200 employees who had been fired for misconduct or performance issues.

The GOP should be advertising in states where Democrat senators are up for re-election in 2022, letting the voters know that the IRS could be launched against them if their Democrat senator votes for BBB.

 

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/poll_shows_strong_public_opposition_to_bidens_plan_to_spend_80_billion_to_hire_almost_87000_new_irs_agents_and_vastly_increase_audits.html

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Trump's Ad Banned By YouTube - Frontpagemag.com

 

by Frontpagemag.com

Will you do your part?

 

Below is Trump's latest commercial that was banned by YouTube -  but that is being re-uploaded by Americans who are tired of the Left's fascist censorship. Will you send it to all of your contacts? Thank you!

 

Frontpagemag.com

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/trumps-ad-banned-youtube-frontpagemagcom/

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Omicron Variant – Scourge or Savior? - Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

 

by Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

This could actually stop COVID, converting it into a something more akin to seasonal flu.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Thanksgiving, with gratitude for our many blessings, although these are becoming scarcer over the past two years. At the same time, we received news of a new COVID variant. It seems the world is on some type of Chinese gift registry where we receive quarterly presents, starting with the original Chinese coronavirus, followed every few months by a new variant and subsequent lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates.

This coronavirus is acting more like a herpes virus, the one that gives us cold sores that seem to come and go on their own cycle. But these COVID variants are far more bothersome than a lip blister as they are disrupting travel, commerce, and life in general for much of the world.

The latest COVID variant is called Omicron, further down the Greek alphabet from familiar Delta and Lambda variants. The ever-woke and deferential to China, World Health Organization intentionally skipped two Greek letters ahead of Omicron, Nu and Xi. Nu might be confused with “new”, although nothing about current responses is new, including travel bans, masks, and mandates. Letter Xi might give unwanted credit to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, although given COVID’s origin, it would be a fitting tribute.

Is the Omicron variant a Christmas scourge or savior? Some scientists think it’s a lump of coal in a stocking on Christmas morning. As reported by the BBC,

Omicron has such a long list of mutations that it was described by one scientist as "horrific", while another told me it was the worst variant they'd seen.

It has now been detected in more than 30 countries and there are signs it may be able to bypass some of our immunity.

 Then in the next paragraph, they decide it’s not so bad after all,

But there are also claims that it could be milder than earlier versions of Covid, such as Delta.

Which is it? And if it is indeed as mild as many claim, could it save the world by pushing us closer to herd immunity?

YouTube screen grab

The scary bit about Omicron is the high number of mutations, an "unusual constellation of mutations" and that it was "very different" from other variants that have circulated. Specifically, it contains 50 mutations overall and more than 30 on the spike protein. This is important because the vaccines encourage the body to create antibodies to the spike protein.

The current crop of vaccines stimulate antibody production to the Alpha variant, the original Chinese coronavirus that plagued the world last year and was the dominant strain during vaccine development. With 30 new mutations on the spike protein, the vaccines are making antibodies to something that no longer exists, like sending the police to apprehend a burglar who is long gone from the crime scene.

Compare this to natural immunity after previous infection, a concept conveniently ignored by the medical and political establishments. There are 29 coronavirus proteins and natural immunity likely provides antibody, T-cell, and B-cell immunity to most or all of these proteins, unlike the vaccine which only targets the spike protein, and one no longer in existence, replaced by successive Greek letter variants.

If the spike protein mutates, the naturally immune have resistance to all the other proteins, unless they all mutate at once, a highly unlikely scenario.

For those infected and recovered, their natural immunity may be robust and long acting. Emory University acknowledged, “COVID-19 survivors may possess wide-ranging resistance to the disease.” For those who want more data, here is a collection of 81 research studies confirming natural immunity to COVID as equal or superior to vaccine immunity.

The NIH agrees. In January 2021 they reported, “The immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection.” The 8-month figure is important since COVID had only been around about that long, meaning there was no waning of immunity to date.

Compare that to what we are seeing with the vaccines where, “the immune protection offered by two doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine drops off after two months or so” according to CNN. Natural immunity can last decades, as reported in Nature,

Patients who recovered from SARS (the disease associated with SARS-CoV infection) possess long-lasting memory T cells that are reactive to the N protein of SARS-CoV 17 years after the outbreak of SARS in 2003.

This paper was published in 2020, 17 years after the 2003 SARS outbreak, meaning that coronavirus immunity showed no decline to date and could very well last a lifetime.

Given that viruses typically mutate in a direction or more transmissibility and less lethality, Omicron may be our savior. This concept is known as Muller’s ratchet, named after an American geneticist. As Becker’s Healthcare reported,

New research from Cleveland Clinic suggests that early mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were deadlier but quickly overtaken by more transmissible variants, which may explain why mortality has decreased as the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed.

Could Omicron be our ticket out of the COVID quagmire? Norwegian scientists think so,

COVID experts in Norway say that Omicron variant being highly transmissible but “milder” could prove to be the “best scenario” because it would boost “natural immunity” and bring the end of the pandemic closer.

Dr Anthony Fauci agrees. Reuters reported, “Fauci says early evidence points to Omicron being more transmissible but less severe.”

Can viruses mutate in the other direction? Yes, but rarely. The AP reports, “There are documented cases of viruses becoming more deadly.” In science there are always exceptions, just as it can snow in July and be 75 degrees in January, but good science follows the norm, not the exception.

Think of Omicron as an old school vaccine, an attenuated or weakened virus, enough to cause mild disease in the vaccinated, stimulating the immune system to respond, creating long lasting immunity, but without killing or severely injuring the vaccine recipient. This is how viruses propagate over time, infecting and spreading but without killing their hosts.

This could actually stop COVID, converting it into a something more akin to seasonal flu. The rapidly spreading but only mildly virulent Omicron variant may accomplish what the current vaccines do not, potential worldwide natural immunity negating the push for universal vaccination, boosters, and mandates.

I must add the standard and necessary disclaimer that I am not anti-vaccine, having been personally fully vaccinated. Nor am I offering medical advice, only an analysis of this newsworthy issue. Any vaccine decisions should be between you and your physician.

Clearly the vaccines alone are not putting an end to the current COVID pandemic as lockdowns, quarantines, travel bans, along with vaccine boosters and mandates are still in effect almost two years into the pandemic. Life has not returned to normal as promised by President Biden and others, despite most Americans being vaccinated.

In fact, vaccines are having little positive effect, as described in this Harvard based study recently published in the European Journal of Epidemiology,

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days. In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.

In other words, COVID case rates are increasing along with vaccination rates. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? We may not be able to vaccinate our way out of the current pandemic.

Even the CDC acknowledges this inconvenient truth, noting about Omicron, “About 75% of those cases are in people who are fully vaccinated, and one person has been hospitalized.” There is an internet meme circulating which claims Alec Baldwin has killed more people than the Omicron variant. Snopes confirms no Omicron variant deaths thus far.

Which is why a mild version of COVID, the Omicron variant, may be the pathway forward, as this USA Today headline suggests, “Omicron could be more contagious, less dangerous. That would be good news for the human race.” And the ultimate Christmas present after a bleak two years.

Hopefully government and public health officials will acknowledge this pathway forward, rather than repeating the same measures that have thus far been marginally or not effective and continue to crush the wallets and spirits of Americans heading into Christmas.

 

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. is a physician and writer. On Twitter as @retinaldoctor.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/omicron_variant__scourge_or_savior.html

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Democrats are terrified that ordinary Americans are calling them out - Andrea Widburg

 

by Andrea Widburg

The hyperbole was thick in the air, along with more than a soupçon of hypocrisy and a huge dollop of fear.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, Chuck Todd gathered around him John Heilemann, a leftist journalist; Marianna Sotomayor, a leftist journalist; Brendan Buck, an ostensible Republican who worked for Paul Ryan and John Boehner; and Kimberly Atkins Stohr, a leftist journalist.  All five were unanimous: democracy in America is over because Americans don't believe that Biden honestly won his seat in the White House.  The hyperbole was thick in the air, along with more than a soupçon of hypocrisy and a huge dollop of fear.

Sundance, at The Conservative Treehouse, caught the roundtable and summed it up thusly:

The NBC media panel for Meet the Press is absolutely apoplectic about their inability to destroy President Donald Trump and his supportive base of pragmatic, awakened Americans.   The pearl-clutching and fear are palpable, as the leftist roundtable contemplates future elections that may deconstruct decades of election control, manipulation, fraud and falsehood.

That's exactly right.

The starting point for the panel discussion was an overwrought article that Bart Gellman wrote for The Atlantic in which he claimed that Trump's "Next Coup Has Already Begun."  The premise is that

Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart the victory at their polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.

Todd asked whether that was hyperbole or fact, and every one of the assembled guests assured him that this was a fact.  (See video at the bottom of this post.)  I can't dissect everything they said, but a few things leaped out.

Marianna Sotomayor (no relation to the Supreme Court justice) is horrified that "you still, on Capitol Hill, have many Republicans denying that that was an insurrection."  Yeah, pretty much, because unarmed grannies walking through the Capitol taking pictures while cops shoot and beat women is not an insurrection, no matter how disgustingly cowardly our representatives are.  If you want scenes of insurrection, just cast your mind back to what leftists were doing when Christine Blowsy Fraud was defaming Brett Kavanaugh and Elizabeth Warren was openly encouraging them.

John Heilemann contends that 20 to 30 million people are lusting after political violence, which he immediately analogizes to lynching.  It's as if 2020 — riots, looting, assault, and murder, powered by BLM, Antifa, and a generalized leftist mob — never happened.  Moreover, he claims that the individual states are setting up for a coup.  What he's referring to are initiatives to limit election fraud: cleaning up voter rolls, doing away with often illegal mail-in ballot initiatives, stopping vote-harvesting, etc.  So the "coup" is that elections will be more honest.

Brendan Buck, who's a political hack, in my opinion, offered a wordy take about Georgia elections.  Boiled down, he said Jody Hice is running to unseat Brad Raffensperger, who, contrary to available evidence, insisted that Fulton County ran a perfectly clean election.  If he's elected, that raises the possibility that states might not certify future elections.  Unsaid is that they would refuse to certify until they're sure election results are fraud-free.  The horror!

Kimberly Atkins Stohr, who is Black, immediately announced that the current situation is exactly like the Civil War, thanks to Trump having created clones of himself.  "[W]hat you have that's even worse is that you have an entire party — it's no longer just about Donald Trump.  It's a party that's about adopting his tactic, which is you deny the results of the last election or else you move forward with efforts to subvert democracy or else."

Denying election results?  Yes, Democrats did that:

 

Moving forward with efforts to subvert democracy?  Why yes, Democrats did that, too.  I believe that it was called the Russia Hoax.  There was also the Very Fine People Hoax.  The Ukraine Phone Call Hoax.  The two impeachment hoaxes.  The Grab 'Em by the Pussy Hoax.  The mass Resist movement.  And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Stohr.

Meanwhile, not a word was said about the way the government has systematically violated the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights of the January 6 prisoners; about the unconstitutional vaccine mandates no court can stomach; about Biden's aggressive destruction of the economy; or about his administration's blatant violation of America's immigration laws, just to name a few of his actions that drag America farther from a constitutional democratic republic.

To these leftist talking heads, "democracy" means only that they win by hook or by crook and then govern unopposed.  As to that, they're quite right to be worried that their unprincipled, illegal, and hysterical behavior from 2016 through 2020 tipped off the American people to their totalitarian approach to governance.

Image: Meet the Press.  YouTube screen grab.

Correction: Jody Hice pronoun corrected

 

Andrea Widburg

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/democrats_are_terrified_that_ordinary_americans_are_calling_them_out.html

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Can Feminism Destroy China? - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

No marriages, no babies, and no future.

 

China’s one-child policy suppressed the birth rate with forced abortions and political terror for a generation. Only allowed one child, many Chinese families chose to abort their baby girls.

The deficit of 40 million female babies is now the specter stalking Communist China.

China’s aggressive military moves against Taiwan and India are a desperate gambit by a corrupt Communist elite facing domestic social instability and millions of men who can never marry.

But while the focus has been on too many Chinese men, it’s the too few women whom the regime is starting to fear. The Communist society is being forced to reckon with the social problem of supply and demand in the marriage market. Women, formerly despised, are now in the driver’s seat, with the bride’s family demanding tens of thousands from prospective grooms.

That price is putting marriage out of reach for a whole other category of poorer men.

But what really has the Communist elite worried is not the high price of marriage, but the growing number of professional women who aren’t interested in getting married at all.

And many of those who do are getting divorced, leading the regime to impose a 30-day cooling off period after there were more divorces than marriages recorded in China in 2019.

The big question for Communist leaders was whether they could defeat the West economically without becoming so much like it that they would have to adopt its society and its politics. The fall of the Soviet Union was a cautionary tale about the dangers of western liberalization. And China appeared to have avoided the pitfall, suppressing its democracy movement and maintaining a Communist oligarchy even as it outperformed America in the marketplace.

But Xi and the Communist leadership fear that they just delayed the inevitable. China is seemingly more powerful than ever, its people are nationalistic, Hong Kong has been consolidated, and Taiwan is expected to follow, making One China into a reality.

And yet the Communist leadership shows every sign of panicking, cracking down on entertainment and tech companies, and purging its own oligarchy on a monthly basis.

Despite the outward allegiance to Xi and the Communists, the country’s rising middle class is westernized, individualistic rather than collectivist, intent on having fun and stocking up on all the latest consumer gadgets, instead of sacrificing and laboring in the cause of Communism.

The falling marriage and birth rates are the obvious symptom of China’s new social feminism.

Marriage licenses have fallen to a 13-year low and the birth rate has hit a 43-year low. With only 12 million babies born in 2020, the old mathematical joke about the Marching Chinese now falls flat. Like the rest of Asia, China is aging, and its workforce is falling by 0.5% a year.

China's 1.3 birth rate looks worse than those of America or Europe, but unlike them, the Chinese birth rate isn't being artificially inflated with a huge population of immigrants.

While the Communist leadership has tried to apply economic fixes to a social problem, a recent survey in one rural area found that only 60% of young women wanted to get married while 82% of men did. The combination of an aspiring professional female workforce with the sex-selective abortion caused by the one-child policy has made China’s gender relations uniquely horrible.

In America, as in most first world countries, women are more interested in marriage than men. The reversal of the gender stereotype in China is a tribute to how the country’s toxic mixture of traditionalism, Communism, and consumerism is playing out in its dysfunctional society.

Communist China made marriage and child-bearing into a political duty. The rising affluent middle class that navigated the suicidal peaks of exams, pursue shallow escapism and luxury goods in the off hours from their stressful office jobs, and have little interest in children.

The Communist regime is taking notice. In typical leftist fashion, it's fighting the problem as an ideological threat, arresting feminists and banning the 6B4T keyword, a South Korean feminist movement that urges women not to marry and to avoid conventional beauty standards.

But China’s problem is coming less from the traditional activist woke feminism, which the regime will have little trouble stamping out, but the larger economic shift in gender roles.

52.5 percent of students in Chinese colleges and universities are female. That's not quite as extreme as the 60/40 split in the United States or the even more extreme gender gaps in some European countries, but in a decade or two, China may catch up to us there as well.

Religion may be declining in America and Europe, but the Communists had done their best to stamp out faith in China and replace it with party loyalty. And then it replaced starving rural labor with mega-cities and mega-buildings filled with office drones who have no meaning or purpose in life beyond purchasing the latest iPhone, listening to the latest hit or watching the latest show.

The single career women who have redefined the culture and politics of America and Europe are on the rise in China. In interviews they express a disinterest in marriage and family. They enjoy focusing on themselves, shopping, socializing and traveling with little interest in the future of their country or their society. They seek no meaning beyond the luxuries and comforts of life.

And the marketplace in China, much like in America and Europe, caters to them as a cultural and economic force because of their spending power and role as social media influencers.

China’s entertainment landscape is filled with shows that are culturally, rather than politically, feminist. The Romance of Tiger and Rose, with some 900 million views, features a matriarchal society where men are not allowed to study or work, and are cursed when boys are born. The joke here is not just a reversal of China’s past, but a possible preview of its demographic future.

Had China retained its former society, the growing economic value of girls would have led to a reverse gender gap, but the growing shift from rural subsistence farming to the urban office workers of the middle class means that the gender gap is being overshadowed by falling birth rates. The new society spends less time calculating the price and profit of marrying off children and worries about the imminent disruptions of a child on a young urban couple’s quality of life.

China, despite its Communist hierarchy and total control of the economy and society, is caught in the same conjoined cultural and economic trap as the first world. On the verge of realizing its aspirations to becoming a first world power, China is stuck reliving the price that Japan, the last Asian country to try and become a military and then economic superpower, paid for its wish.

The Cold Warriors of the eighties were wrong in believing that economic success was impossible without freedom and democracy. But they were generally right in believing that any country that wanted to economically defeat us would have to become us. They just failed to properly understand what becoming “us” really meant. It’s not democracy or freedom.

America, like its other first world counterparts, is becoming less free, and more political. When people say that our politics is downstream of our culture, what it really means is that much of our politics is about a culture rationalizing the way that it wants to live. The abandonment of religion, family, character, and all traditional values, is not just a Marxist conspiracy, it’s the self-indulgent behavior of overgrown children who decided that they never want to grow up.

In the Communist heartland, under a Marxist system built to reinforce the opposite qualities, a surprisingly similar revolution is taking place. The Communist regime, which believed it had total control over the lives of its people, has gone from mandating abortions to offering families the opportunity to have three children. The labor force is shrinking, the marriage and birth rates are falling, and the Xi regime can’t figure out how to turn back the clock and preserve its power.

Communist China’s history is one of grandiose planned efforts that blew up in the party’s face. One of its worst famines occurred when Mao decided to have the populace wipe out all the sparrows, leading to an infestation of insects that the sparrows had kept in check. Such subtle checks and balances pervade the natural world and human society, but the Marxist view of the universe is incapable of taking into account the complex and paradoxical nature of reality.

Mao’s inability to grasp the nature of the sparrow, the imminent obstacle in the ecosystem, is nothing compared to the inability of his successors to understand the relationships of men and women. Human nature, always elusive to ideologues, has brought down every Communist plan for world domination before, not through force of arms, but the hubris of its miscalculations.

Xi believes that China’s Communist regime is different even as demographics are undoing his mandate of heaven. While this century has been heralded as belonging to China, studies suggest that China's population will drop by 50% by 2100. While 732 million may be nothing to sneer at, much of that will consist of its rapidly aging elderly population.

By 2050, 336 million Chinese elderly will form a bloc larger than that of the United States. If the birth and marriage rates keep dropping, a Communist gerontocracy will preside over failing dams, mega-cities, and a shrinking empire of senior citizens and single career women as the “barbarians” in the Muslim hinterlands with stronger birth rates sweep in.

Communism claimed to be able to harness history, but history always has the last laugh.

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center specializing in investigative reporting on the Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/can-feminism-destroy-china-daniel-greenfield/

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"Is the Biden Administration at War with Israel?" - Guy Millière

 

by Guy Millière

[T]he purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem." — Eugene Kontorovitch, professor, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia School of Law, Israel Hayom, December 5, 2021.

• "The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah -- where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem." — Eugene Kontorovitch, professor, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia School of Law, Israel Hayom, December 5, 2021.

• The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states that "a consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State's consent". In other words, reopening the consulate may be done only with the consent of the Israeli government.

• All this cannot be dissociated from the general hostile attitude of the Biden administration towards Israel from the moment it came to power.

• Earlier in March, an internal memo from the US State Department was leaked to The National, a daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The National reported that "The Biden administration memo recommends voicing US principles on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework 'based on the 1967 lines'".

• The author of the memo is Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. It is hard to imagine that Amr was chosen as an "honest broker". Amr has a long history of anti-Israeli activities.

• Amr also is the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 in which some proposals are made that could be regarded as disturbing. The report says that the United States must "reconnect" with Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group; seek "to create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas", and "compel Israel to make major concessions", even if it may "endanger Israel". The report never defines Hamas as a terrorist group, and never says that Hamas's goal is to destroy Israel. The report adds, "should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway."

• The behavior of the Biden administration towards Israel is all the more worrying in that at the same time, it places itself in a weak position regarding negotiations with Iran and seems ready to make a deal with the mullahs' regime at any price, in a resolution that has already been called "less for less", or, worse, "less for more".

• An Israeli diplomatic service briefing recently announced the Biden administration is ready to accept a deal with Iran that includes only two elements: the removal of all international sanctions still imposed on Iran, and Iran's pledge to stop enriching uranium, which would mean that Iran's nuclear program would remain intact and that Iran's regional destabilization actions, including its threats against Israel, could continue.

• Two days before the current negotiations began, chief Iranian Army spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said to the Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) that Israel's annihilation is his country's "greatest ideal before us and the greatest goal we pursue."

• Iran claims, truthfully or not, that it already has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear warhead on short notice. On November 8, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, announced that Iran will only agree to sign a deal with the US if all sanctions are unconditionally lifted. "Either we agree on everything, or we agree on nothing," he said.

• The US Biden Administration seems.... at a time finally of peace, deliberately acting to destabilize not only Israel's new coalition government but, more importantly, the entire region. The United States seems once again to be igniting, on the heels of its failure in Afghanistan, yet a second, unnecessary disruption, with all the carnage, global damage and pandemonium that will result. Those two historic upheavals will be the legacies of the Biden Administration. If Biden is looking for yet another disaster to notch on his belt, this is it.

"The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem." — Professor Eugene Kontorovitch, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University. According to Dore Gold, formerly both Israel's Ambassador to the UN and Foreign Ministry Director-General, "The opening of the consulate on Agron Road in the west of the city will not only undermine Israeli sovereignty in the capital, it will also result in a serious withdrawal from the status Israel achieved in West Jerusalem prior to 1967." Pictured: The former US Consulate on Agron Road in Jerusalem, Israel, photographed in 2009. (Image source: Magister/Wikimedia Commons)

On May 2018, when the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated on the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel's founding, the US consulate in Jerusalem became useless and quickly shut its gates. Now, in 2021, the current US Biden administration wants to reopen the consulate, "for the Palestinians", Arabs ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

Seeing this proposal as a threat to Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declined the request.

"A U.S. consulate in Jerusalem to a foreign body", wrote the noted attorney and former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and "clearly runs afoul of American law" because of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, passed overwhelmingly by both the U.S. House and Senate.

"With the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, there was no basis for a consulate to exist. The Jerusalem embassy provides consular services on a non-discriminatory basis to all Israelis and Palestinians — equal treatment for Jews, Christians and Muslims. The consulate thus became obsolete and a waste of taxpayer dollars. I know of no other country where the United States maintains an embassy and a consulate in the same city."

"The US Embassy in Jerusalem," asserts Eugene Kontorovitch, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law, "already provides consular services to the Palestinians."

"It is unheard of to have an independent consulate in the same city where a country has an embassy. The point of creating a separate consulate is to undermine former US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem... The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah -- where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem."

The consulate is not in the eastern part of the city, emphasized Dore Gold, formerly both Israel's Ambassador to the UN and Foreign Ministry Director-General. Reopening it would not only be signal "the desire to divide Jerusalem", he said, but constitute "an attempt to call into question Israel's sovereignty over the entire city".

"The opening of the consulate on Agron Road in the west of the city will not only undermine Israeli sovereignty in the capital, it will also result in a serious withdrawal from the status Israel achieved in West Jerusalem prior to 1967."

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states that "a consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State's consent". In other words, reopening the consulate may be done only with the consent of the Israeli government.

Nevertheless, it seems that the Biden administration is considering taking lawless unilateral action once again, this time by placing a new sign on the consulate, and getting ready to trigger a diplomatic crisis between Israel and the United States. Aware that such a diktat could lead to a fall of the coalition government currently in power in Israel, the Biden administration is now trying to seduce the Israeli government by making offers to it.

To suggest in exchange the creation of economic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, however, is ridiculous: economic ties already exist between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Talking about the introduction of limited visa exemptions to Israeli tourists is no better: to imagine that an Israeli government could consider calling into question of the sovereignty of Israel over its own capital in exchange for visa exemptions is, in fact, an insult.

It appears, however, that the Biden administration, whatever the consequences, does not intend to give up on its destabilizing project.

All this cannot be dissociated from the general hostile attitude of the Biden administration towards Israel from the moment it came to power.

As early as January 26, less than a week after Joe Biden was sworn in, acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Mills announced that the Biden administration supported "the Palestinian people's legitimate aspirations for a state of their own and to live with dignity and security".

On April 7, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken published a statement declaring that the United States will "restart U.S. economic, development, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people". He added:

"This includes $75 million in economic and development assistance in the West Bank and Gaza, $10 million for peacebuilding programs through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and $150 million in humanitarian assistance for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)".

The problem is that this US assistance will not go to the "Palestinian people", but to the Palestinian Authority -- which will doubtless use a significant portion of it to finance more terrorism. The PA still continues to finance terrorism, through a program often nicknamed "pay for slay". On May 10, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America published a text explaining that "By Renewing Palestinian Aid, America Is Funding Terrorism".

Part of the US aid money will go to Gaza, hence to Hamas, still officially designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Blinken, bizarrely, seems to see no contradiction between helping an entity governed by a terrorist organization and contributing to its purported "peacebuilding programs". UNWRA, despite effectively being an employment agency for Hamas terrorists, will thereby again receive US assistance. Many of its premises serve as arms depots for Hamas, but apparently that inconvenient fact has been set aside.

When, in May, the leaders of Hamas, apparently certain that there would be no American reaction, raised tensions in Jerusalem, incited riots on the Temple Mount, and launched a massive missile attack on Israel, the Biden administration for two days did not say a word. On May 13, answering a journalist, Biden simply said, "Israel has a right to defend itself". The next day, he added, "Palestinians -- including in Gaza -- and Israelis equally deserve to live in dignity, safety and security". He did not condemn Hamas, which, by firing on densely populated civilian areas, was committing a war crime; instead, he disingenuously put Hamas and Israel on an equal footing, with no distinction between the aggressor and the victim of that aggression.

On May 17, Biden asked Israel's Prime Minister not to "destabilize the region", as if it were Israel that had been guilty of initiating the violence and had no right to defend itself. Hamas and Biden both asked for a cease-fire; however, on May 20, as soon as one was in place, Biden, while quickly reaffirming that Israel did have a right to defend itself, immediately promised to "provide rapid humanitarian assistance and to marshal international support for the people of Gaza and the Gaza reconstruction efforts" -- without ever mentioning the damage suffered by Israel.

Since then, the guideline followed by the Biden administration towards Israel appears not to have changed.

On October 22, when the Israeli government accurately designated six Palestinian NGOs affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as "accessories to a terrorist organization", US State Department Spokesman Ned Price immediately charged that the State Department had not been informed:

"We are currently engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for these designations. It is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate that we did not receive a specific heads-up about any forthcoming designations".

The State Department, it turns out, had been informed. Not only had it received the necessary information, but the Israeli government had expressed its readiness to provide any missing information.

The State Department appeared to be trying to ignore that the six NGOs designated by the Israeli government as affiliated with the terrorist group, PFLP -- Addameer, Al Haq, Bisan Center, the Samidoun Palestine Prisoner Solidarity Network, Defense for Children International Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees -- had been engaging in suspicious activities, described in detail by NGO Monitor. Addameer, for instance, has been supporting Palestinians imprisoned in Israel for terrorism. Al Haq is defined by NGO monitor "a leader in anti-Israel lawfare" and "BDS campaigns". The Bisan Center aims to "enhance Palestinian's resilience" -- a word used by Palestinian organizations as a synonym for "resistance", a euphemism for killing Israelis -- for the Samidoun Palestine Prisoner Solidarity Network, which works to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons. Defense for Children International Palestine and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees raise funds internationally and use them to finance PFLP activities. If information was missing, the State Department could easily have requested it; instead, it chose to create a public incident.

On October 27, Israel approved the construction of 1,300 new housing units in settlements in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank (of the Jordan River). Price delivered an extremely harsh condemnation of Israel:

"We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution".

The proposed housing units, however, are to be built inside of settlements that already exist.

What does seem "completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm" are the negative comments against Israel made by the Biden administration. Indeed, they have been leading to increasingly more violent remarks from the Palestinian leadership, who doubtless see themselves as newly empowered by the US.

Prospects for a two-state solution always have been -- and still are -- totally absent from the speeches of Palestinian leaders. Israel has offered the Palestinians many chances for two-state solutions and for peace; they have always been always rebuffed outright, without even a counter-offer. Now, prospects for a two-state solution are also totally absent from Israel's new leaders.

On September 24, in his prerecorded address to the UN General Assembly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 16^th year of his four-year term, falsely accused Israel of "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing". He added:

"Circumstances on the ground will inevitably impose equal and full political rights for all on the land of historical Palestine, within one state".

The Biden administration keeps repeating that it wants a "two-state solution", but there are signs that it may want more.

On November 9, the Biden administration did not reject a UN resolution called "Assistance to Palestine Refugees". Instead, it voted to abstain. The text, among other things, says that "Palestine refugees are entitled to their property and income derived from it." Almost all of the people designated by the UN as "Palestine refugees" have never owned property in Israel and are not real refugees: they were born outside Israel and have never set foot in Israel. On January 14, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote a tweet saying: "it's estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria".

The Biden administration, by abstaining, is therefore confirming a lie. "The resolution comes up every three years," wrote the journalist Yaakov Lappin. "The U.S. abstaining was a marked departure in policy -- all previous American administrations except the Obama administration have voted against this resolution."

Earlier in March, an internal memo from the US State Department was leaked to The National, a daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

"The Biden administration memo recommends voicing US principles on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework 'based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees'".

The author of the memo is Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. It is hard to imagine that Amr was chosen as an "honest broker".

Amr has a long history of anti-Israeli activities. On January 31, 2002, he published in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper an article in which he said that he was "inspired by the intifada." Four months later, on May 8, 2002, he published in the same newspaper an article describing Israel as "occupied Palestine", accusing the Israeli government of "ethnic cleansing" and defining Israel's supporters in the US of being "pro-ethnic-cleansing activists".

Amr also is the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 in which some proposals are made that could be regarded as disturbing. The report says that the United States must "reconnect" with Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group; seek "to create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas", and "compel Israel to make major concessions", even if it may "endanger Israel". The report never defines Hamas as a terrorist group, and never says that Hamas's goal is to destroy Israel. The report adds "should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway." The report proposes allowing the Palestinians to develop a "greater portion of West Bank Area C under full Israeli control" -- meaning a decrease in the territories of Judea and Samaria under Israeli control without the agreed-upon negotiations to determine any outcome. The report also supports the idea that a territorial decrease and a net weakening of Israel are necessary to achieve peace.

Everything the Biden administration does in Israel today seems to be drawn from that report, including the idea of reopening the U.S Consulate in Jerusalem "for the Palestinians".

The behavior of the Biden administration towards Israel is all the more worrying in that it places itself in a weak position with Iran regarding negotiations and seems ready to make a deal with the mullahs' regime at any price in a resolution that has already been called "less for less", or, worse, "less for more".

The Biden administration, by backing two openly genocidal enemies of Israel, Hamas and Iran, appears committed to destroying the only reliable democracy in the Middle East.

On February 19, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price announced that the United States was ready to "discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran's nuclear program". He did not mention the multiple violations by Iran's mullahs of the 2015 nuclear deal. Not one member of the Biden administration criticized Iran's support for Hamas when Hamas attacked Israel in May.

In June, Iran, well before resuming negotiations on November 29, chose to replace President Hassan Rouhani with Ebrahim Raisi, "the butcher of Tehran", reportedly a criminal and fanatic. Iranian diplomats are not meeting directly with American negotiators, and only want to speak to European diplomats who act as intermediaries. The Biden administration agreed to that humiliating position.

Iran's then Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted a tweet on April 2, 2021, stating the goal of the mullah's regime: "removal of all sanctions". "No Iran-US meeting. Unnecessary", he added dryly: the Biden administration's team are not even in the room.

Two days before the current negotiations began, chief Iranian Army spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said to the Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) that Israel's annihilation is his country's "greatest ideal before us and the greatest goal we pursue."

An Israeli diplomatic service briefing recently announced that the Biden administration is ready to accept a deal with Iran that includes only two elements: the removal of all international sanctions still imposed on Iran, and Iran's pledge to stop enriching uranium, which would mean that Iran's nuclear program would remain intact and that Iran's regional destabilization actions, including its threats against Israel, could continue.

Iran claims, truthfully or not, that it already has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear warhead on short notice. On November 8, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh declared that Iran will only agree to sign a deal with the US if all sanctions are unconditionally lifted. "We either agree with everything or disagree with nothing," he said.

On September 27, 2021, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned that "Israel is ready to act alone if necessary". The Biden Administration seems, therefore, at a time finally of peace, deliberately acting to destabilize not only Israel's new coalition government but, more importantly, the entire region. The U.S. seems once again to be igniting, on the heels of its failure in Afghanistan, a second, unnecessary disruption, with all the carnage, global damage and pandemonium that will result. Sadly, it looks as if the legacy of the Biden Administration will be those two historic upheavals. If Biden is looking for yet another disaster to notch on his belt, this is it.

"Is the Biden administration at war with Israel?" asks Martin Sherman, founder and CEO of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

"Undermining the stability and safety of the only reliable democracy in the Middle East," wrote a physician, Dr. Shmuel Katz, "will... empower the enemies of good".

Israel, according to the journalist Caroline Glick, is strong enough to defeat its enemies. But, she warns, "Israel's security establishment needs to wake up from its American delusion. America does not have Israel's back. Only Israel has Israel's back".

On September 30, Hamas, assuming that it now has the full support of the United States, organized a conference in Gaza City to "prepare the future administration of a Palestinian state", scheduled to take power after the destruction of Israel. The conference defined what would be the fate of the Jews who would survive the war . The Jewish soldiers still alive, those at the conference decided, would all be killed. Non-combatant Jews would be allowed to leave "Palestine", but educated and economically useful Jews would have to remain, enslaved, and become third-class "tolerated" residents, knows as dhimmis, so that their skills could be used for building the new Palestinian state. Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, repeated that "the full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river" is "at the heart of Hamas's strategic vision."

Did the Biden Administration even notice?

 

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18010/biden-administration-israel

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