Kerry's suspension of disbelief - Yoram Ettinger

by Yoram Ettinger

Apparently, Kerry takes lightly the failure of the Palestinian leadership to pass any of the crucial tests of its commitment to peaceful coexistence

The term "suspension of disbelief" refers to the well-intentioned subordination of documented facts and common sense to zeal and wishful thinking, sacrificing long-term realism on the altar of oversimplification and short-term gratification and convenience.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's Dec. 28 speech was replete with suspension of disbelief and totally inconsistent with the reality in the Middle East. But it was consistent with his 31-year foreign policy track record.

Kerry was the top frequent-flying senator to Damascus, allowing his own idyllic vision of the globe and his hosts' duplicitous rhetoric to cloud reality. He contended that first Hafez Assad and then Bashar Assad -- two of the most ferocious, cold-blooded dictators in the world -- were constructive leaders, referring to Bashar Assad as a generous reformer and a man of his word, even while the Syrian president was terrorizing his people and facilitating the infiltration into Iraq of Islamic terrorists whose aim was to murder Americans. 

In his 1997 book "The New War," Kerry demonstrated an inclination to dismiss the writing on the wall when in conflict with wishful thinking: "Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman." 

In March 2011, Kerry stated: "My judgment is that Syria will move, Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the U.S. and the West." Indeed, Syria has changed. But, contrary to Kerry's assessment, not in a good way, with hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions displaced and made refugees.

In 2012, Kerry contended that the Arab Street was transitioning toward democracy, "the most important geo-strategic shift since the fall of the Berlin Wall." He referred to the Arab uprisings as an "Arab Spring" and to the regime changes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen as youth and Facebook revolutions. Kerry supported regime change in Libya, which has transformed Libya into a leading global platform of Islamic terrorism.

Kerry's road map to peace has stumbled over some critical pitfalls that he has refused to see.

In his latest speech, Kerry maintained that the crux of the failure to conclude a peace agreement has been lack of trust, saying: "Negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinian Authority] did not fail because gaps were too wide, but because the level of trust was too low." 

Apparently, Kerry takes lightly the failure of the Palestinian leadership to pass any of the crucial tests of its commitment to peaceful coexistence -- in 1993 (Oslo Accords), 2000 (Prime Minister Ehud Barak's unprecedented proposals) and 2005 (the uprooting of all Jewish settlements from Gaza) -- by responding to unparalleled Israeli territorial and diplomatic concessions with a dramatic escalation of hate education and terrorism. The Palestinians' notorious hate education and incitement have resulted in an effective production line of terrorists, and are the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian strategic goal. 

Contrary to Kerry's observation, the crux of the failure has been the inherent nature of the Palestinian leadership, highlighted by its long-term track record from the 19th century until today: from waves of anti-Jewish terrorism through the collaborations with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and East European Communist regimes, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Islamic, Asian, African, European and Latin American terror organizations.

While Palestinian leaders are welcome by the U.S. State Department with a "red carpet," Arab leaders welcome them with "shabby rugs" in response to the Palestinian violent back-stabbing of Arab hosts (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and, most painfully, Kuwait in 1990). 

Kerry stated that "the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians" and that the U.N. vote "was about preserving the two-state solution" and was in accordance with U.S. values. 

However, the track record of the Palestinian leadership certifies that a Palestinian state would be another rogue, violent regime, undermining U.S. values and national security, adding fuel to the regional fire, constituting a lethal threat to the vulnerable pro-U.S. Hashemite regime in Jordan -- with potential spillover into Saudi Arabia and the pro-U.S. Gulf states -- undermining stability in Egypt, upgrading the potential of a pro-ayatollah bloc from Teheran to Ramallah, providing port facilities to the Russian (and possibly Chinese and Iranian) navy in the Eastern Mediterranean, and adding another anti-U.S. vote at the already anti-U.S. United Nations.

Once again, Kerry is attempting to scare the Jewish state into reckless concessions, implying that the only way to preserve a Jewish majority is by conceding Jewish geography (the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria). Once again, he was restating inauthentic, manipulated Palestinian statistics, and ignoring the demographic reality in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel: a growing 66% Jewish majority, unprecedented Westernization of the Arab population, and a robust Jewish demographic (fertility and net-migration). 

Kerry also misled the public when he claimed that U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 "called for the withdrawal of Israel from territory that it occupied in 1967 in return for peace and secure borders." Kerry failed to indicate that this resolution did not stipulate "all the territories"; that Israel had already complied with the resolution by conceding 90% of the territory when it evacuated the entire Sinai Peninsula; and that Israel fought a pre-emptive defensive war in 1967. He failed to mention that in 1988 Jordan waived its claim to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (which was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan); and that Israel possesses the best legal title over the area based on Articles 77 and 80 of the U.N. Charter, which upholds the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which aimed to establish a Jewish national home.

While Kerry attempts to coax Israel into reliance on security arrangements and guarantees, he fails to indicate that such tools are characterized by non-specificity, non-automaticity and ample escape routes that may doom Israel on a rainy day. The NATO treaty does not commit the U.S. to anything more than considering steps on behalf of an attacked NATO member "as it deems necessary." In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower concluded a defense treaty with Taiwan, which was annulled by President Jimmy Carter with the support of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S.'s and Israel's national security, and the pursuit of peace, require a long-term, tenacious commitment to realism, not oversimplification, short-term convenience and suspension of disbelief. The critical errors of the past have doomed a litany of well-meaning peace initiatives.

Yoram Ettinger

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18047

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How the Collapse of the USSR Felt from the Inside - Oleg Atbashian

by Oleg Atbashian

A reflection by a witness 25 years later.

25 years ago George Bush Sr. was still in office, and so was Saddam Hussein. The European Union didn't exist and neither did China's economic powerhouse. The Berlin wall had just come down and Germany had finally reunited. Hillary Clinton was a little-known mouthy First Lady of Arkansas and the media gleefully predicted that Donald Trump would never climb back to the top after his Atlantic City fiasco.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Eastern bloc was in shambles, but the USSR was still standing with Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm. Vladimir Putin dabbled in minor corruption working for the Mayor of Saint Petersburg, which had just been renamed from Leningrad. The KGB meddled in other countries' affairs as usual, spreading "fake news" and helping leftist politicians to win elections with no objections from the Western mainstream media.

Then, all of a sudden, the USSR disappeared from the map. How did that happen? Political scientists have and will continue to write, with varying degree of accuracy, about the details of it. What I'm attempting to do here is describe how it looked and felt from the inside - as seen by me, who at the time happened to be a voiceless, powerless Soviet citizen trying to make sense of the universe.

The Soviet clocks may have been the fastest in the world, but time wasn't moving and seemed to be broken. With three-fourths of the country overlapping with Asia, where time had stopped a millennium ago, the Soviet Union defied the Western concept of progress. The official TV and radio stations always played old, slow songs with flowing melodies; if their purpose was to set a sluggish rhythm of life for the rest of us, it was working. Even the few semi-unofficial rock bands tried but mostly failed to get a different rhythm out of their instruments. It was as if we all lived in a gigantic aquarium, whose sleepy inhabitants lazily picked slowly descending flakes of bland food, distributed to them by the invisible owner's hand. It could be quite relaxing if that is your thing, but most of the time I felt like a trapped passenger of the sunken ship at the bottom, next to the fake plastic seaweed.

The textbook date of the end of the USSR is December 26, 1991, but for us, Soviet citizens, the dissolution began a few months earlier and happened in stages.

Very few people feared or believed the Communists any longer, ridiculing their institutions and their lying media. A typical political joke at the time was about a man who always complained that Communists had run out of everything - food, toilet paper, consumer goods, and so on. So the KGB brought him to their office and tried to explain that the country was going through historic changes and we all needed to be patient. "You should be thankful this isn't the old days when you could be shot," the KGB officer said, pointing a finger to his head. To which the man responded, "Ah, so you've also run out of bullets."

The Soviets continued to obey the old establishment mostly out of habit and because there was no functioning alternative. We knew something was bound to happen; we just didn't know when.

To understand the reasons of the breakup, one must remember that the USSR was a union of fifteen ethnic republics that had little in common except for the common misfortune of being absorbed into a messianic empire and subjected to absurd social experiments. Though they were all touted as "equal," everyone knew that Russia was "more equal" than others.

Officially, the Soviet Union was a model of international solidarity and brotherly love. Unofficially, it was a prison of nations. Any non-Russian nationalist sentiment was viewed as treason and as an attempt to escape. In contrast, Russian nationalism was encouraged; it was a glue that held the country together, which effectively turned ethnic Russians into jailers. What started as a maximum-security prison, however, towards the end degraded into a low-security facility with crumbling perimeter fencing and drunken jailers who no longer wanted their jobs.

The first mortal blow to the system was delivered by the breakout of Ukraine. Technically speaking, the first inmates to get away were the three Baltic states, but those had been known malcontents who always kept to themselves and their escape wasn't critical to the empire's survival. But when the second-most powerful republic ran off with its prime real estate, industries, agriculture, and ethically related Slavic population, the compulsory "brotherly union" could no longer exist.

Secession from the USSR had been a matter of hypothetical speculation for months if not years in every Soviet republic. However, after a failed communist coup d'état in Moscow on August 19, that idea was upgraded from hypothetical to absolutely urgent and necessary. The delusional coup members had attempted to bring back a form of Stalinism, but they only succeeded in convincing everyone that the threat of tyranny would always remain as long as there was a USSR in its current form.

A few days later, on August 24, Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party, ridding the country of a nominal force that held it together. On the same day, no longer bound to the Kremlin's masters, Ukrainian leadership declared independence from the USSR, pending a popular referendum in December. Other Soviet republics quickly followed suit.

Years later Mikhail Gorbachev said that "the most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe." I couldn't agree more. However, back in 1991, Gorbachev campaigned against Ukraine's referendum to exit the USSR as passionately as today's European leaders (and even president Obama) campaigned against Brexit - a similar referendum whereby British citizens voted to exit the European Union.

Gorbachev's hopes to keep the USSR alive were crushed on December 1, when 90% of Ukrainian voters (including me) chose independence. Opponents of the referendum had tried to scare us with the specter of Ukrainian nationalism, which they said was as bad as Nazism. But a 90% vote for exit in a country where only 70% were ethnic Ukrainians proved that people feared staying in the USSR more than they feared the "scary" nationalists. All they wanted was to live as a normal independent European nation.

The U.S. Press Secretary Fitzwater cautiously congratulated us on the results of the referendum, but reminded us that the official recognition of an independent Ukraine would take time. Foreign governments expressed concern about 1.5 million soldiers and 176 nuclear missiles based in Ukraine, as well as about its industry producing aircraft carriers, heavy military planes, and missile launching equipment (these concerns were removed later after the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and demilitarized in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity).

But the real point of no return was crossed a week later, on December 8, when leaders of the three Slavic republics of the union - Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine - gathered behind Gorbachev's back at a mansion deep in the Belorussian woods and signed a declaration proclaiming that "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics no longer exists as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality."

The declaration, known as the Belavezha Accords, announced the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or the C.I.S., and welcomed other formerly Soviet republics to join. Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk called it a model for the European Community, based on "horizontal relationships" as opposed to the "vertical relationship" with the central government in the form of a pyramid with Gorbachev at the top.

The same night, unsuspecting Gorbachev spoke on TV, warning Ukrainians that if the USSR should dissolve, Russia would most certainly claim possession of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. On Ukrainian TV, a local official representative shrugged him off, calling Gorbachev's opinion "a tragedy of a man outstripped by his time." After all, Ukrainian president Kravchuk and Russian president Yeltsin had signed waivers of any mutual territorial claims.

Morning newspapers called the C.I.S. declaration a political bomb laid under Gorbachev's chair. Instantly, the peak of the tremendous pyramid of power appeared hanging in the air with no support, with an army of bureaucrats crashing down on the ground, screaming in anger and swearing to get their positions back.

Reports from the Wall Street and Tokyo exchanges registered an increase of the dollar against the yen and the German mark, since Germany and Japan were the biggest money lenders to the old USSR. At about the same time, English-speaking Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S., Canada, and Australia made a point that everybody should stop spelling Ukraine with the definite article "the" because it was no longer a province but an independent nation. Native speakers had no idea what that meant since Slavic languages have no articles, definite or indefinite. But the same idea could be expressed with different prepositions, so one could now glean people's political leanings by their use of grammar.

I remember that it was a Sunday because I spent that day at the airport, seeing off a friend who had traded his Soviet citizenship for a refugee status in America. As it turned out, he fled the USSR on the same day the USSR ceased to exist. We didn't know it at the time, but on the following day I was thinking that my friend wasn't the only one who left the old country for good. We all did. In a way, we all received a free ride, only my friend landed in the U.S., and we landed in the C.I.S.

He, a Soviet refugee in the U.S., was entitled to welfare benefits. We, Soviet refugees in the C.I.S, weren't. There wasn't a plane nor a train or a ship that could take us back. No amnesty would grant us a return. It was a different form of emigration. The new country looked exactly like the old one: the climate, the buildings, the language, the people and their problems. And yet something was different,  something in the air, something that pioneers must feel in new territories: a chance to start a new life.

Founded by Lenin, expanded by Stalin, and somewhat remodeled by Khrushchev, the USSR remained an impossible, contrived, and hopelessly fake Potemkin village of a country until on its seventy fourth year the "three Slavic leaders" went ahead and cut a slice of it each for himself, leaving the rest for the taking.

For a human civilization, seventy four years is a blink of an eye. For the hundreds of millions of individual souls trapped within its militarized borders, it was the only time they had. Imagine being born and living an entire life in a bomb shelter, seeing everything in the artificial light, breathing filtered air, and learning about the outside world only from military reports. My generation was luckier than others - we were still young, in our early thirties, when we stepped out of the bomb shelter and walked on our shaky legs into the forbidden sunshine. Some of us couldn't get our eyes off of the sun and went blind, proving that our elders were right - the sun was dangerous! But the rest of us didn't care. Unlike the bulbs of measured brightness, the sun was also equally bright and warm for everyone.

It was a country of many names. They called it a freak and a prophet, the world's bogeyman, the cradle of the revolution, the evil empire, the bulwark of peace and socialism, the prison of nations, the embodiment of the brightest dreams of humanity.

It had given me my first notions about the world. I grew up knowing there were things we shouldn't be talking or thinking about. But when someone tells you not to think about an elephant, all you do is think about an elephant. I figured out early on that no one could check if I wasn't thinking about the things I shouldn't be thinking about.

Life would have been easier if the list of forbidden things existed in the form of a spreadsheet with three columns for the name, description, and magnitude, similar to the List of Forbidden Rock Bands. But even if such a list of forbidden things existed, we would by definition be forbidden to see it. All we knew was that things on that list were always changing and so we had to be careful what we say and to whom, which taught us never to trust our own judgment. Instead, we were expected to check the Party newspapers for reliable updates on how to see the reality correctly on any day of the week. Once I entered the workforce, newspaper subscriptions became mandatory.

Our teachers kindly taught us that individual liberties resulted in crime, violence, and depravity. The Communist Party was the only thing that kept us alive, separating us from chaos and certain death. Individual people couldn't be trusted to make the right choices, which was why we needed a caring government. It was a matter of common knowledge that should the government stop regulating society, the world would almost immediately end in a terrible bloodbath.

At the same time our teachers told us that the Communist ideology was "historically optimistic." And I remember thinking to myself then that a capitalist society that trusted people with their freedoms was a lot more historically optimistic than the bunch of misanthropic curmudgeons in the Kremlin who taught us to fear freedom and took everything away from us in exchange for a vague utopian promise. Not in these exact words, but that was the general idea.

We were taught to love our country for its beauty, mind, and soul - and so we did, while secretly hating it for its deformity, idiocy, and cruelty. Now this bipolar relationship was over. No longer will the word "USSR" invoke that special paranoid feeling of a humongous monster rising behind my back, depressing me and supporting me at the same time. We called it the Motherland. It will sound like Neverland to my children. They won't grow up to be Soviets like their parents. We were the last of the Soviet breed. Not of the New Man breed, though, because the promised New Man of Communism - the selfless, multitalented altruist - never emerged despite the seven decades of painstaking indoctrination. At least no one can say he wasn't given a chance.

The student-age Soviets were thrilled for the hell of it, but they didn't have much to say. Those closer to retirement felt scared and disoriented, but their long lives had taught them to keep their mouths shut. The ones in between were for the most part too busy with their daily survival. Like working ants, they didn't care about large distant objects. What could the three presidents offer them apart from changing the name of their anthill? The passing away of the glorious messianic era was met with silence.

Though I was born in Ukraine, I was taught to think of the rest of the USSR as my land as well. My land is your land, and your land is my land, even if I'll never be able to correctly pronounce your land's god-awful name or spell it in your ridiculous language. Now the era of many names was over, too. Stretching from Europe to the Pacific, the vast country slept under a white blanket of snow, like an uncharted white spot on the world map - or a gigantic blank page. A nameless country.

Gorbachev resigned seventeen days later, by declaring the president's office extinct. On the following day the Council of Republics voted the Soviet Union (and itself) out of existence. It was December 26, 1991 - a date forever stamped on the USSR's official death certificate.

A POSTSCRIPT

I wish I could say "and everyone lived happily ever after," but that would be a lie.

The official breakup had gone so smoothly in part because the former Communist Party and government bosses were in a hurry to enjoy new opportunities offered by the independent economies within a quickly emerging private sector. The highly centralized Soviet system had been too bulky and riddled with nepotism and corruption, leaving those outside of Moscow fewer chances of advancement. The breakup gave the formerly disadvantaged bureaucrats a chance to be the rulers of their own corrupt domains.

My dreams to see Ukraine develop into a prosperous European country were dashed when I realized how thoroughly corrupted the society had become after decades of socialism. The way most people imagined capitalism was the ugly caricature painted for them by Communist propaganda. Instead of re-examining that wrong image, it was simply assumed that ugly was the new beautiful. So we ended up constructing a caricature of capitalism.

Our former Communist elites found this approach agreeable. In the absence of qualified experts, they were now in charge of transitioning to the market economy, which in their minds was indistinguishable from crony capitalism. Soon the former USSR had become a commonwealth of kleptocracies where billionaire thieves ruled over impoverished subjects, beset by high unemployment and hyperinflation. The only exception were the three Baltic states that had retained some memory of how life was before their 1939 annexation.

Vladimir Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century." His idea to reassemble the USSR, albeit in a different format, is critical to the survival of the immense centralized kleptocracy he has crafted in Russia. His biggest fear is an emergence of a transparent, functioning government in any of the ex-Soviet states, which will make his loyal subjects wonder why Russia can't also be like that. Putin's notion of "maintaining Russia's sphere of influence" most fittingly translates as "using bribes and threats to keep the neighboring corrupt regimes dependent on Russia's corruption, thus ensuring the continuation of his power."

For that very reason, when in 2014 Ukrainians revolted against their pro-Russian corrupt government, Putin punished them by annexing the Crimea and orchestrating a war in eastern Ukraine. His willingness to violate the Budapest accord (and thus suffer international sanctions) prove how critical for his power it is to keep his neighbors corrupt and dependent.

While the extent of Russia's meddling in American politics this year has been greatly exaggerated (for obvious reasons), such an interference isn't new and has existed since at least the 1930s. Imagine how much damage Russia's interference, multiplied tenfold, can do to a weaker neighboring country with a Russian-speaking majority and frail democratic traditions.

In 1994 I emigrated to America, hoping to raise a family in a country ruled by reason and common sense. But lately I've been noticing a shortage of these commodities in the U.S. as well. While the ratio of reasonable people in this country may still be greater than elsewhere in the world, the ignorant passion for Soviet-style politics is very alarming.

Just as it was in the USSR, American media now publishes articles that read like Pravda's updates on this week's current truth. American entertainers and moviemakers are consistently pushing the politically correct party line. Social media giants are seriously considering political censorship. Indoctrination in American schools and colleges is worse than what I've seen in the Soviet Union, where getting a real education was actually important. And finally, just as it was in the USSR, more and more people begin to resent the "progressive" establishment and mock the lying media.

The way I see it, the proliferation of socialist ideas is largely a consequence of the decades-long Soviet meddling in American affairs, aimed at demoralizing the public and promoting the "correct" people and opinions in places where it mattered most. According to KGB defectors, only about 15% of Soviet intelligence activities here focused on actual espionage; the rest were influence operations. Their seeds have now blossomed, long after the "gardeners" have left this earth. Today's left-wing radicals in the Democratic Party owe Russia a large debt of gratitude for their unearned power. Seeing Russia turn against them in the last election must have felt excruciatingly scary and painful; they still seem to be in shock.

History is still being written. In this country, where a citizen's voice still means something, we are a part of this writing process. Trump's victory and the movement it started makes me feel "historically optimistic" again. This winter it is America's turn to be a blank page. It is up to us what will be written on it.

Oleg Atbashian

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265311/how-collapse-ussr-felt-inside-oleg-atbashian

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Housing Units and Double Standards - Joseph Puder

by Joseph Puder

Where is Obama’s outrage about the Palestinians building 15,000 illegal housing units?

The Obama Administrations unprecedented vote to abstain rather than cast the traditional veto on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334, was, in the words of Professor Alan Dershowitz, “nasty” and referring to Obama as pulling a “bait and switch.” In a Fox-News interview, Dershowitz related that President Obama called him to ask for his support. Obama, Dershowitz recalled, said, “I will always have Israel’s back.” Dershowitz added, he indeed “stabbed” Israel in the back.  The Obama administration rejection of the traditional U.S. policy toward Israel has to do with a personal vendetta against Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and anger over the election of Donald Trump as president.  There is moreover, a double-standard vis-à-vis housing in the territories.

UNSC Resolution 2334 is a non-binding document and deals with Israeli settlements in “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”  The resolution states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes “flagrant violation” of International law that has “no legal validity,” and demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligation as an “occupying power” under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The December 23, 2016 UNSC resolution obfuscates history and reality. It is reminiscent of the notorious 1975 UN Resolution that equated Zionism (Israel national liberation movement) with racism, this time with the Obama administration’s collusion, albeit, without naming it Zionism.  The very term “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” is outrageously false.  Israel did not take “Palestinian territory in 1967, it took Jordanian territory, which the Jordanian Arab Legion illegally occupied in 1948. Israel won Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in a defensive war, after being attacked by Jordan. There was never a state of Palestine, nor Palestinian territories.  What might have been “Palestinian territories” was rejected by Arab-Palestinians in 1947 during the UN vote on the Partition of (British) Mandatory Palestine. The Palestinian-Arabs, unlike Jewish-Palestinians, rejected the partition, choosing instead to annihilate the nascent Jewish state.

Ambassador Alan Baker, an Israeli expert on International law, former Israeli ambassador to Canada, and director of The Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, pointed out that the Palestinian claim that “settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians (1949) is false. But both the text of that convention, and the post-World War II circumstances under which it was drafted, clearly indicate that it was never intended to refer to situations like Israel’s settlements. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Article 49 relates to situations where populations are coerced into being transferred. There is nothing to link such circumstances to Israel’s settlement policy.

During the negotiations on the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Arab states initiated an addition to the text in order to render it applicable to Israel’s settlement policy. This was indicative of the international community’s acknowledgment that the original 1949 Geneva Convention language was simply not relevant to Israel’s settlements.

The continued reliance by the international community on the Geneva Convention as the basis for determining the illegality of Israel’s settlements fails to take into account the unique nature of the history, legal framework, and negotiating circumstances regarding the West Bank.

A special regime between Israel and the Palestinians is set out in a series of agreements negotiated between 1993 and 1999 that are still valid – that govern all issues between them, settlements included. In this framework there is no specific provision restricting planning, zoning, and continued construction by either party. The Palestinians cannot now invoke the Geneva Convention regime in order to bypass previous internationally acknowledged agreements.”

Naturally, nothing has been said by the Obama administration about the illegal Arab-Palestinian construction of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.  Bassam Tawil, a Gatestone Institute scholar based in the Middle East pointed out that, “Apparently, settlements are only a ‘major obstacle to peace’ when they are constructed by Jews. The EU and some Islamic governments and organizations are paying for the construction of illegal Palestinian settlements, while demanding that Israel halt building new homes for Jewish families in Jerusalem neighborhoods or existing settlements in the West Bank. The hypocrisy and raw malice of the EU and the rest of the international community toward the issue of Israeli settlements is blindingly transparent. Yet we are also witnessing the hypocrisy of many in the Western mainstream media, who see with their own eyes the Palestinian settlements rising on every side of Jerusalem, but choose to report only about Jewish building.” 

Tawil rhetorically asked “Who is behind the unprecedented wave of illegal construction? According to Arab residents of Jerusalem, many of the ‘contractors’ are actually land-thieves and thugs who lay their hands on private Palestinian-owned land or on lands whose owners are living abroad. But they also point out that the EU, the PLO and some Arab and Islamic governments are funding the project.  ‘They spot an empty plot of land and quickly move in to seize control over it,’ said a resident whose land was confiscated by the illegal contractors.”

Arab-Palestinian construction is not only illegal but unsafe as well.  While the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria has long been carried out with proper licenses, and within the framework of the law, the Arab-Palestinian construction does not begin to meet even the minimum standards required by engineers, architects, and housing planners.  The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) goal is to create irreversible facts on the ground.  Moreover, half the apartments built remain empty, in spite of the ludicrous price tag of $25,000 - $50,000 per unit, when comparable Jewish housing is $250,000 and up.  The answer is, of course, the EU funding.  These homes have been built without permits, corroborated by the fact that unauthorized or illegal building by Palestinians is an ongoing problem in Area C, solely under Israeli control.
It is the same EU countries who voted to declare the Western Wall of Solomon’s Temple , and the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem as “Palestinian territory” at last Friday’s vote (December 23, 2016), funded Palestinian housing, while repeatedly condemning Israeli construction due to family enlargement.  Yet, in the Oslo Accords framework there is no specific provision restricting planning, zoning, and continued construction by either party in Judea and Samaria.  The difference is that Jewish construction is done lawfully, legally, and safe, while the Palestinian construction is unlawful, unsafe, and serves one purpose only - to avoid negotiating with Israel a peaceful disposition of the territories called Judea and Samaria.  
The UN, Britain and the Obama administration expressed outrage last October at Israel’s plan to construct 300 new homes in Judea and Samaria, but no such outrage at the genocide in Syria, or the building of 15,000 illegal Palestinian housing units in areas surrounding Jerusalem as part of a plan to encircle the city.  The Obama administrations deliberate abstention in last Friday’s vote, which was akin to voting “yes” for this notoriously anti-Israel biased resolution, is inimical to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and will serve to further encourage the PA to incite against the Jewish state, while avoiding a negotiated settlement with Israel.  It also exposes the double-standard used by the Obama administration in dealing with Israel.

Joseph Puder

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265303/housing-units-and-double-standards-joseph-puder

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Britain's Little Lies - Douglas Murray

by Douglas Murray

At the same time as the Prime Minister was talking about "true friendship" in front of friends of Israel, her government was conspiring with the outgoing Obama administration to kick that friend in the back.

• This is a serious category error for a Prime Minister to make. It puts critics of a religion on the same plane as people wanted for terrorism. It blurs the line between speech and action, and mixes people who call for violence with those who do not.
• Only now, a fortnight later, has the true duplicity of Theresa May's speech been exposed. For now the world has learned what diplomacy the British government was engaged in even as May was making her speech. At the same time as the Prime Minister was talking about "true friendship" in front of friends of Israel, her government was conspiring with the outgoing Obama administration to kick that friend in the back. The British government was exposed as being one of the key players intent on pushing through the anti-Israel UNSC Resolution 2334. British diplomats were revealed to have been behind the wording and rallying of allies for the resolution.
• The British government, whilst saying that it remains committed to a peace deal that comes as a result of direct negotiations between the two sides, has its own preconditions for peace: a freeze on the building of what it calls "settlements." They maintain this line despite the fact that settlements have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements." Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
• If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose anti-Semitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.

On December 12, the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, gave a fulsome speech to the annual Conservative Friends of Israel lunch. Before a roomful of 800 pro-Israel Conservative MPs and party supporters, she lavished praise on the Jewish state. She praised Israel's achievements and castigated its enemies. She said that Britain would be marking the centenary of the Balfour declaration "with pride." She also stressed that cooperation and friendship between Britain and Israel was not just for the good of those two countries, but "for the good of the world."

For many of the people listening in the room, there were just two discordant notes. The first was related to the focus on anti-Semitism in May's speech. As she used the opportunity rightly to lambaste the Labour party for its anti-Semitism problem, she extended the reach of her own claims for herself. While boasting of her success as Home Secretary in keeping out the prominent French anti-Semite Dieudonné and finally deporting the Salafist cleric Abu Qatada al-Filistini back to his native Jordan, she also used the opportunity to congratulate herself for banning Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Pastor Terry Jones from coming to the UK. "Islamophobia comes from the same wellspring of hatred" as anti-Semitism, she explained.

This is a serious category error for a Prime Minister to make. It puts critics of a religion, such as Geller and Spencer, on the same plane as people wanted for terrorism (Qatada). It blurs the line between speech and action, and mixes people who call for violence with those who do not. The comparison also fails to follow the consequences of its logic to its own illogical conclusion. The comparison fails to recognise that anyone who objects to Islamic anti-Semitism is immediately known as an "Islamophobe." Therefore, someone hoping to come to Britain would have to accept being attacked by Muslim extremists for fear of being banned from entering the UK. These are serious and basic misunderstandings for a Prime Minister to propagate.

There was, however, a clear political sense to them. A Prime Minister in a country such as 21^st Century Britain might believe that he or she has to be exceptionally careful not to appear to be criticising any one group of people or praising another too highly. So for the time being in Britain, a moral relativism continues to stagnate. If the Jewish community complains of anti-Semitism, then you must criticise anti-Semitism. If the Muslim community complains of "Islamophobia," then you must criticise "Islamophobia." To make value judgements might be to commit an act of political folly. Wise leaders in increasingly "diverse" societies must therefore position themselves midway between all communities, neither castigating nor over-praising, in order to keep as many people onside as possible.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at the annual Conservative Friends of Israel lunch, December 12, 2016. (Image source: Conservative Friends of Israel)

The same tactic brought the other discordant moment at the Prime Minister's lunch -- the same tactic brought to the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. For the other discordant note in May's speech came when she mentioned Israeli settlement building. It was carefully placed in the speech, after a passage in which May congratulated her own Department for International Development (DfID) Minister, Priti Patel. In the days before the lunch, Patel had announced that DfID would carry out an investigation to determine whether British taxpayer money being sent to what May called "the Occupied Palestinian Territories" was being used to fund salaries for Palestinians convicted of terrorism offences against Israelis. Following this May said:

"When talking about global obligations, we must be honest with our friends, like Israel, because that is what true friendship is about. That is why we have been clear about building new, illegal settlements: it is wrong; it is not conducive to peace; and it must stop."

The comment was received in silence and May moved on.

But this comment fitted in closely with the strategy of her other comment. For having lavished praise on Israel, a castigation apparently seemed necessary. It is wrong, but hardly possible for a British Prime Minister currently to do otherwise. If there are terrorists receiving funds from British taxpayers thanks to the largesse of the UK government, then this may -- after many years of campaigning by anti-terrorism organisations -- finally be "investigated." However, throughout any such investigation, the British government, whilst saying that it remains committed to a peace deal that comes as a result of direct negotiations between the two sides, has for years announced its own preconditions for peace: a freeze on the building of what it calls "settlements." They maintain this line despite the fact that settlements have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements." Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow -- in 1948, 1956, and 1967. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.

At the time of May's speech, these two issues seemed like minor cavils to some and gained little notice. Only now, a fortnight later, has the true duplicity of the speech been exposed. For now the world has learned what diplomacy the British government was engaged in even as May was making her speech.

At the same time as the Prime Minister was talking about "true friendship" in front of friends of Israel, her government was conspiring with the outgoing Obama administration to kick that friend in the back. In the wake of the collapse of the Egyptian-sponsored initiative at the UN, the British government was exposed as being one of the key players intent on pushing through the anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334. British diplomats were revealed to have been behind the wording and rallying of allies for the resolution.

The most obvious interpretation of this fact is simply a reflection that friends do not kick friends in the back. Especially not in the world's foremost international forum for kicking that particular friend. But some people are putting a kinder interpretation on the facts. The kindest to date is that the May government believes that a sterner line on the issue of Israeli settlements would give the British government more leverage with the Palestinians.

If that is so, then it seems that the May government will have to learn abroad the same lesson that they must learn at home. Both will come about because of the same strategic mistake: a reliance on the short-term convenience of what must seem at first to be only convenient little lies. The problem is that such little lies, when tested on the great seas of domestic and international affairs, have a tendency to come to grief with exceptional rapidity and ease.

Politicians are keen on taking stands. But if you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose anti-Semitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand for Israel while simultaneously conniving at the UN to undermine Israel, then your duplicity will be exposed and admiration for this and other stands will falter. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding. They have before -- at home and abroad -- and they will again.

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Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

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How Liberal Democrats Institutionalized White Supremacy - Michael Bargo, Jr.

by Michael Bargo, Jr.

The only way blacks have improved their lives is to leave, on their own, their institutionalized poverty of place: they have begun to leave the ghettoes of New York and Chicago.

The election of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, was seen as a landmark achievement for a nation that once dehumanized blacks and held them as slaves. The expectation was that President Obama would lift up the socioeconomic status of blacks throughout the nation and rid the country of its attitudes of racial discrimination and bias.

But the exact opposite has happened. Obama’s record of black achievement is not just dismal, it is shocking. Obama’s policies have put blacks out of the work force, their unemployment rate has risen. Welfare use and food stamp enrollment have also seen startling and disappointing increases.

At first one could argue that this is because the nation was too prejudiced to allow him to establish any programs that would elevate blacks in the U.S. But this argument cannot be made, since Obama spent and borrowed more money than any government leader in world history, not just U.S. history. How this historical expenditure failed to lift up the economic status of blacks is the most important issue of Obama’s presidency, for no other reason than that was his self-avowed goal.

An analysis of Obama’s failure to help blacks can only be understood when the long-term policies of Democrats toward blacks are acknowledged. The plain truth is, Democrats have never been concerned with raising the socioeconomic status of blacks. To the contrary, history shows that Democrats have been solely focused on controlling blacks, segregating them into impoverished communities, and restricting their families to lives of poverty, crime, incarceration, and desperation.

The oppressive policies of Democrats toward blacks has a history over two hundred years old. It extends back to the Democrat party’s support of slavery in the South. Time and again, at every opportunity, southern Democrats consistently acted to suppress the rights of blacks. For example, when the U.S. was first being formed as a nation, some northern representatives wanted to completely abolish slavery, but their efforts were curtailed by southern slave owners.

When efforts were made to allow slaves to escape to free states, the states’ rights movement, led by Democratic politicians like John Calhoun, argued that a slave belongs to his owner no matter if he goes to a free state or not. This states’ rights approach is still being seen today when Democrats argue they have the right to promote illegal immigration.

The Civil War was fought to abolish slavery. Two amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, were passed to abolish the practice. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing blacks from the bonds of slavery.

Democrats have never wanted equality for blacks. In retaliation for losing the Civil War, Democrats in the South started oppressive vigilante groups and wrote laws to hinder the participation of blacks in politics. The laws written to suppress black voting were not banned until the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was filibustered by Senator Robert Byrd, who was an active KKK leader and recruiter. The KKK was started after the Civil War to intimidate blacks and keep them from voting.

And shockingly, Hillary Clinton, who promoted herself as a protector of civil rights, supported Senator Byrd and called him a man of “nobility,” “protector of the constitution” and her “mentor.” It is startling that this anti-black agenda of the Democrat Party persists to this day.

During the 2016 presidential election, President Obama and other Democrat leaders started the Black Lives Matter movement. They had the help of financier George Soros, who is most accurately seen as the financier of a resistance movement, the movement of the Democratic Party to resist change in its oppressive institutions. Blacks are no longer held by chains, they are held back by poor education, poor education guaranteed by the institutions of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. These two organizations have millions of members through the U.S. ensuring that blacks will never overcome the oppression Democrats have institutionalized for them.

Democrats are now renewing their efforts to maintain their control of blacks by introducing the concepts of “white privilege” and “white supremacy.” Curiously, they fail to confess that their institutions, established through Democrat government policies, are the real obstacles blacks, and now Hispanics, face.

Liberal Democrats make sure that blacks and Hispanics will never improve their socioeconomic status. An improvement in their socioeconomic status will threaten the Democratic Party’s control. The 2016 election was narrowly lost, and Democrats see their only hope as restoring their absolute control of black and Hispanic voters. To do this they are blaming the oppression of racial minorities on Republicans, but Republicans were not responsible for creating the big city ghettoes and barrios where Democrats are now creating a second, oppressed racial group, Hispanics.

In fact, the promotion of illegal immigration and the segregation of illegal immigrants into barrios in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York proves that liberal Democrats still cling to their principles of impoverishing minorities by race and then using their despair to obtain votes. No one can argue that Democrats respect Hispanics when they say illegal immigrants are in the U.S. to do “low paid jobs no one else will do.” This is racist, exploitive, and brutal language, intended to achieve only one goal: to keep Hispanics in poverty, just as they did blacks. In fact, this degrading language toward Hispanics is an exact duplication, a precise resurrection, of the language used to enslave blacks: that people from Africa are needed to pick cotton and tobacco because these are low paid jobs no one else will do.

This intentional degradation of an entire group of people is shocking to see practiced today, but it has been done with such subtlety and rhetorical sleight of hand that it has worked.

When these facts of history are combined with the rhetoric and actions of liberal Democrats today, the true nature of their scheme can be understood: that they, and they alone, have institutionalized white supremacy, in order to maintain their political power. Political power enables them to control these two racial groups and guarantee political power far into the future.

Anyone who argues that these are not facts needs to review the history of the Democratic Party’s abuse of blacks, and explain how, after spending more money than any government leader in history, Obama totally failed to elevate the blacks of the U.S. The only explanation is: it’s far too important to the Democrats to keep the black and Hispanic vote for them to allow these two groups to improve themselves.

Liberal Democrats institutionalized white supremacy by keeping blacks and Hispanics in poverty through government institutions, particularly education and the support of single motherhood through entitlement programs. These facts are indisputable.

The only way blacks have improved their lives is to leave, on their own, their institutionalized poverty of place: they have begun to leave the ghettoes of New York and Chicago. Blacks are leaving the cities of the Northeast and moving back South. 

Michael Bargo, Jr.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/how_liberal_democrats_institutionalized_white_supremacy.html

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Argentina court reopens probe into cover-up on 1994 Jewish center attack - Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

by Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Tribunal grants motion by a coalition of Jewish associations to hold a fresh review of 1994 Buenos Aires bombing that killed 85 people • Argentine former President Cristina Fernandez to be investigated for covering up alleged Iranian involvement.

Argentine former President Cristina Fernandez | Photo credit: Reuters

An Argentine court ordered a renewed investigation on Thursday into a prosecutor's accusation that former President Cristina Fernandez covered up the alleged involvement of Iranians in the 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

The bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association center killed 85 people and wounded hundreds. Iran has denied any connection with the attack and declined to turn over suspects in the case.

Argentina's official Center of Judicial Information said the country's top criminal tribunal had accepted a motion by a coalition of Jewish associations to re-examine the charge made by prosecutor Alberto Nisman on Jan. 14, 2015, against Fernandez, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and other officials in her government.

"The evidence does not allow for a clear dismissal of the possible commission of illicit acts," the center said in a statement. "The accusations must be weighed in advance of dismissal."

Nisman alleged Fernandez reached a secret deal with Iran's government to hide the role of several Iranian officials suspected in the bombing.

He was found dead with a gunshot to the head four days later. His death was initially ruled a suicide, but an official investigating the case said early this year that the evidence pointed to homicide. 

Fernandez, president from 2007 to 2015, has denied wrongdoing, and she ridiculed the charge Thursday.

"I am now accused of covering up the AMIA attack that took place ... 22 and a half years ago! The only thing they have failed to do is to accuse me of Kennedy's death," she tweeted.

Fernandez blamed the accusation on what she said is the bias of judges following the orders of her conservative successor, President Mauricio Macri, who took office last December.

Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the Jewish coalition, praised the court's decision.

"A country that wants to reach justice is a country that must investigate, and if Nisman's accusation must be dismissed, we will accept it. But what we cannot do is dismiss an allegation with so much political potential without at least it being investigated," he told The Associated Press.

Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=39163&hp=1

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Obama and Israel, strike and counter-strike - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

The next stage in Obama's all-out assault on Israel.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel.

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second.

On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris.

At France’s lame duck President François Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some 50 states are expected to adopt as their own Kerry’s anti-Israel principles.
The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel as a natural progression from the American Civil Rights movement that King led 50 years ago.

Finally, sometime between January 17 and 19, Obama intends for the Security Council to reconvene and follow the gang at the Paris conference by adopting Kerry’s positions as a Security Council resolution. That follow-on resolution may also recognize “Palestine” and grant it full membership in the UN.

True, Kerry said the administration will not put forward another Security Council resolution.
But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in his response to Kerry’s address, there is ample reason to suspect that France or Sweden, or both, will put forth such a resolution. Since the draft will simply be a restatement of Kerry’s speech, Obama will not veto it.
Whether or not Obama gets his second Security Council resolution remains to be seen. But whether he succeeds or fails, he’s already caused most of the damage. A follow-on resolution will only amplify the blow Israel absorbed with 2334.

Resolution 2334 harms Israel in two ways. First, it effectively abrogates Resolution 242 from 1967 which formed the basis of Israeli policy-making for the past 49 years. Second, 2334 gives a strategic boost to the international campaign to boycott the Jewish state.

Resolution 242 anchored the cease-fire between Israel and its neighbors at the end of the Six Day War. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in secure and defensible borders, Israel would cede some of the territories it took control over during the war.

Resolution 242 assumed that Israel has a right to hold these areas and that an Israeli decision to cede some of them to its neighbors in exchange for peace would constitute a major concession.

Resolution 242 is deliberately phrased to ensure that Israel would not be expected to cede all of the lands it took control over in the Six Day War. The resolution speaks of “territories,” rather than “the territories” or “all the territories” that Israel took control over during the war.
Resolution 2334 rejects 242’s founding assumptions.

Resolution 2334 asserts that Israel has no right to any of the lands it took control over during the war. From the Western Wall to Shiloh, from Hebron to Ariel, 2334 says all Israeli presence in the areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines is crime.

Given that Israel has no right to hold territory under 2334, it naturally follows that the Palestinians have no incentive to give Israel peace. So they won’t. The peace process, like the two-state solution, ended last Friday night to the raucous applause of all Security Council members.

As for the boycott campaign, contrary to what has been widely argued, 2334 does not strengthen the boycott of “settlements.” It gives a strategic boost to the boycott of Israel as a whole.

It calls on states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”

Since no Israeli firm makes that distinction, all Israeli economic activity is now threatened with boycott. Tnuva is an “occupation” dairy because it supplies communities beyond the 1949 lines.

Bank Hapoalim is an “occupation” bank because it operates ATM machines in post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The Fox clothing chain is an “occupation” chain because it has a store in Gush Etzion. And so on and so forth.

Resolution 2334 gives Europe and its NGOs a green light to wage a complete trade and cultural boycott against all of Israel.

Obama is not using his final weeks in office to wage war on Israel because he hates Netanyahu.
He is not deliberately denying 3,500 years of Jewish history in the Land of Israel because the Knesset is set to pass the Regulations Law that will make it marginally easier for Jews to exercise property rights in Judea and Samaria, as Kerry and UN Ambassador Samantha Power claimed.

Obama’s onslaught against Israel is the natural endpoint of a policy he has followed since he first entered the White House. In June 2009, Obama denied the Jews’ 3,500 years of history in the Land of Israel in his speech in Cairo before an audience packed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Instead of the truth, Obama adopted the Islamist propaganda lie that Israel was established because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has rejected the guiding principle of Resolution 242. His antisemitic demand that Israel deny its Jewish citizens their civil and property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews is just as antithetical to 242 as is Resolution 2334.

In his speech, Kerry repeatedly castigated the government while flattering the Israeli Left in yet another attempt to divide and polarize Israeli society. Kerry’s professed support for the Israeli Left is deeply ironic because Israeli leftists are the primary casualties of Obama’s anti-Israel assault.

In the post-242 world that Obama initiated, the UN makes no distinction between Jerusalem and Nablus, between Gush Etzion and Jenin, or between Ma’aleh Adumim and Ramallah. In this world, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog’s plan to retain a mere 2-3% of Judea and Samaria is no more acceptable than Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett’s plan to apply Israeli law to 60% of the area or to other plans calling for Israeli law to be applied to all of Judea and Samaria. All are equally unlawful. All are equally unacceptable.

For the next three weeks, the government’s focus must be centered on Obama and minimizing the damage he is able to cause Israel. Since Israel cannot convince Hollande to cancel his conference or Obama not to give his speech, Israeli efforts must be concentrated on scuttling Obama’s plan to enact a follow-on resolution.

To scuttle another resolution, Israel needs to convince seven members of the Security Council not to support it. Only measures that secure the support of nine out of 15 Security Council members are permitted to come to a vote. The states that are most susceptible to Israeli lobbying are Italy, Ethiopia, Japan, Egypt, Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.
Netanyahu’s furious response to 2334 advance the goal of blocking a vote on a follow-on resolution in two ways. First, they create Israeli leverage in seeking to convince member states to oppose voting on an additional resolution before January 20.

Second, Netanyahu’s seemingly unrestrained response to the Obama administration’s onslaught enables Donald Trump to join him in pressuring Security Council members to oppose bringing a new resolution for a vote.

By taking an extreme position of total rejection of Obama’s actions, Netanyahu is enabling Trump to block a vote while striking a moderate tone.

In three weeks, Obama’s war with Israel will end. His final legacy – the destruction of the landfor- peace paradigm and the two-state policy-making model – obligate Israel, for the first time in 50 years, to determine by itself its long-term goals in relation to the international community, the Palestinians and Judea and Samaria.

Regarding the international community, the Security Council opened the door for its members to boycott Israel. As a result, Israel should show the UN and its factotums the door. Israel should work to de-internationalize the Palestinian conflict by expelling UN personnel from its territory.

The same is the case with the EU. Once Britain exits the EU, Israel should end the EU’s illegal operations in Judea and Samaria and declare EU personnel acting illegally persona non grata.
As for the Palestinians, Resolution 2334 obligates Israel to reconsider its recognition of the PLO. Since 1993, Israel has recognized the PLO despite its deep and continuous engagement in terrorism. Israel legitimized the PLO because the terrorist group was ostensibly its partner in peace. Now, after the PLO successfully killed the peace process by getting the Security Council to abrogate 242, Israel’s continued recognition of the PLO makes little sense. Neither PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas nor his deputies in Fatah – convicted, imprisoned mass murderer and terrorism master Marwan Barghouti, and Jibril Rajoub who said he wishes he had a nuclear bomb so he could drop it on Israel and who tried to get Israel expelled from FIFA – has any interest in recognizing Israel, let alone making peace with it. The same of course can be said for the PLO’s coalition partner Hamas.

An Israeli decision to stop recognizing the PLO will also have implications for the Trump administration.

In the aftermath of 2334, calls are steadily mounting in Congress for the US cancel its recognition of the PLO and end US financial support for the Palestinian Authority. If Israel has already ended its recognition of the PLO, chances will rise that the US will follow suit. Such a US move will have positive strategic implications for Israel.

There is also the question of the Palestinian militias that are deployed to Judea and Samaria as part of the peace process that Obama and the PLO officially ended last Friday. In the coming months, Israel will need to decide what to do about these hostile militias that take their orders from leaders who reject peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Finally, there are the territories themselves. For 50 years, Israel has used the land-for-peace paradigm as a way not to decide what to do with Judea and Samaria. Now that 242 has been effectively abrogated, Israel has to decide what it wants.

The no-brainer is to allow Jews to build wherever they have the legal right to build. If the UN says Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, then Israel has no reason to distinguish between Jerusalem and Elon Moreh.

More broadly, given that for the foreseeable future, there will be no Palestinian Authority interested in making peace with Israel, Israel needs to think about the best way to administer Judea and Samaria going forward. The obvious step of applying Israeli law to Area C now becomes almost inarguable.

Shortly before Obama took office eight years ago, he promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Trump’s election scuttled any chance he had of doing so.

But by enabling Resolution 2334 to pass in the Security Council, Obama has succeeded in fundamentally transforming the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel’s actions in the coming weeks will determine whether it is fundamentally transformed for better or for worse.

Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265313/obama-and-israel-strike-and-counter-strike-caroline-glick

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