Democratic Countries Should Back out of the UN Global Compact - Judith Bergman

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by Judith Bergman

The UN shuts down alternative media coverage of the Conference on the Adoption of the UN Global Compact

• The EU has been paying particularly North African governments for years to keep migrants away from the European continent. The effort seems to have yielded few results in terms of stopping migration to Europe.
• The UN Global Compact stipulates that, "media outlets that systematically promote intolerance, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants" should not receive "public funding or material support."
• Already, it is clear what this stipulation means in practice. The UN recently banned the Canadian outlet Rebel Media from attending the Conference for the Adoption of the UN Global Migration Compact. When Rebel Media asked for an explanation, they were told that the UN, "reserves the right to deny or withdraw accreditation of journalists from media organizations whose activities run counter to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, or who abuse the privileges so extended or put the accreditation to improper use or act in a way not consistent with the principles of the Organization. The decisions are final".
• This form of totalitarian behavior on the part of the UN should encourage more states that still value democracy, immediately to back out of the Compact.

Götz Schmidt-Bremme, head of the UN's Global Forum on Migration and Development, has admitted that the UN's Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is a "controversial text," adding: "Maybe the benefits of legal migration were over-emphasised and we forgot about the challenges... we underestimated the need of communities that above all want to see migrants integrate." (Image source: United Nations)

The ongoing and bitter dispute between the EU and its Eastern European member states -- countries such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- that have refused to take in migrants as part of the EU's quota system, might be approaching some sort of compromise. In an internal document circulated to EU interior ministers in Brussels in early December, Reuters reported, EU member states that refuse to host migrants in their countries could be exempted from doing so, if instead they show "alternative measures of solidarity." According to diplomats, these "alternative measures" are apparently EU code for "paying into the EU budget or paying toward development projects in Africa".

"The document," Reuters noted, "said the European Union would need a proper mechanism to avoid a situation in which all EU governments opted to pay their way out of any hosting responsibilities and would set an eight-year period for any arrangements".

Already in October, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani had said that EU countries who refused to host refugees could instead pay more for EU migration and development projects in Africa. "No relocation - (then) more money for Africa," Tajani said.

"We cannot force (others to take in refugees)," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also said in October, "but those that do not do so must possibly contribute in another way such as... in Africa. Everyone needs to take on some of the responsibility that we all have" .

The idea of paying for development projects in Africa to keep African migrants from coming to Europe is not new. It was aired by Tajani himself in July 2017. At the time, he warned that Europe is "underestimating" the scale and severity of the migration crisis and that unless urgent action is taken, "millions of Africans" will flood the continent in the next five years. He added that there would be an exodus [from Africa] "of biblical proportions that would be impossible to stop if we don't confront the problem now".

The only solution, according to Tajani, is massive investment in Africa to dissuade people from leaving in the first place:

"Population growth, climate change, desertification, wars, famine in Somalia and Sudan. These are the factors that are forcing people to leave... If we don't confront this soon, we will find ourselves with millions of people on our doorstep within five years... Today we are trying to solve a problem of a few thousand people, but we need to have a strategy for millions of people."

The EU has, in fact, been paying particularly North African governments for years to keep migrants away from the European continent, especially through the Union of the Mediterranean. The effort seems to have yielded few results in terms of stopping migration to the European continent. As recently as September 2018, the EU agreed to pay Morocco $275 million in aid "to stem illegal migration to the continent". Indicating how large an enterprise illegal migration is from Morocco alone, its government announced in September that in 2018, security authorities had thwarted more than 54,000 illegal immigration attempts, dismantled 74 criminal networks active in human trafficking and smuggling, and seized more than 1,900 human trafficking vehicles.

The prospect of encouraging millions of migrants to come to the West has persuaded increasing numbers of predominantly Western UN member states to back out of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The Compact, which frames migration as something that needs to be promoted, enabled and protected, is set to be formally adopted at the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in Marrakech, Morocco on December 10-11.

Currently, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland have declared that they will not be adopting the UN Migration Compact. The US had already withdrawn from negotiations on the Compact in December 2017.

"Maybe the benefits of legal migration were over-emphasised and we forgot about the challenges... we underestimated the need of communities that above all want to see migrants integrate," said Götz Schmidt-Bremme, currently ambassador for the 2017-18 co-chairmanship of the Global Forum on Migration and Development, a parallel UN initiative, in which governments discuss migration and development issues.

Louise Arbour, the UN's special representative for international migration commented, said in response to the mass withdrawal of countries from the Compact: "I think it reflects very poorly on those who participated in negotiations... it's very disappointing to see that kind of reversal so shortly after a text was agreed upon."

Arbour stressed that the states backing out will not be "harvesting the benefits" of migration:

"There are many, many countries in the world today that will need to import a part of their workforce... The demographics are suggesting that if they want to maintain their current economic standards or even grow their economy, they're going to have to receive well-trained foreigners to meet the labour market demands in their countries."

She added that, "To foster a culture of exclusion" is "entirely counterproductive". She did not state what guarantees, if any, were being planned to assure that these "foreigners" would be "well-trained".

The UN Global Compact objective 17 (paragraph 33 c) also stipulates that, "media outlets that systematically promote intolerance, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants" should not receive "public funding or material support." Meanwhile, the Compact tries to claim that it is "in full respect for the freedom of the media".

Already, it is clear what this stipulation means in practice -- even before the UN member states have formally adopted the Compact. The UN recently banned the Canadian outlet Rebel Media from attending the Conference for the Adoption of the UN Global Migration Compact. When Rebel Media asked for an explanation, they were told that the UN, "reserves the right to deny or withdraw accreditation of journalists from media organizations whose activities run counter to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, or who abuse the privileges so extended or put the accreditation to improper use or act in a way not consistent with the principles of the Organization. The decisions are final".

This form of totalitarian behavior on the part of the UN should encourage more states that still value democracy, immediately to back out of the Compact.

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13398/un-global-compact-withdrawal

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Europe beats Iran’s war drums - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

As Mogherini and her colleagues were sitting with the Iranians, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French and German governments have agreed to set up a back channel-- to arrange for payments for Iranian exports in a manner that bypasses and so undermines US financial and trade sanctions on Iran.

Last Saturday, Iran’s “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani called Israel “a cancerous tumor” in a speech at the regime’s annual Islamic Unity Conference.

Rouhani’s fellow speakers included deputy Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Both terror bosses called for the destruction of the “cancerous tumor.”

With the predictability of a Swiss clock, the Europeans rushed to condemn Rouhani. The EU in Brussels condemned Rouhani. The German Foreign Ministry condemned Rouhani. And so on and so forth.

We could have done without their statements.

Just two days after Rouhani’s Jewish cancer speech, his representatives sat down with senior EU officials in Brussels to discuss Iranian-EU nuclear cooperation in the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal. Following the talks, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini’s office put out a statement claiming that the sides “expressed their determination to preserve the nuclear agreement as… a key pillar for European and regional security.”

As Mogherini and her colleagues were sitting with the Iranians, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French and German governments have agreed to set up a back channel, in the form of a joint corporation, owned by European governments, whose job will be to arrange for payments for Iranian exports in a manner that bypasses and so undermines US financial and trade sanctions on Iran.

How are we to understand Europe’s behavior? What is possessing Germany and France and Brussels and even Britain, (which is reportedly considering joining the Germans and French in their sanctions-busting operations) to stand with Iran against the US?

It isn’t because Iran has proved its good intentions to them. To the contrary, over the past six months, Iran has plotted three terror attacks in Europe. In June, Iranian operatives murdered a regime opponent in Holland. In July, Belgian authorities prevented an Iranian plot to attack a regime opposition rally in Paris. And in October, Danish authorities intercepted an Iranian terror squad en route to assassinate the head of an organization of Ahwaz Arabs, Iran’s Arab minority that suffers from harsh repression at the hands of the regime.

These terror plots are not the only way that Iran is working to threaten European security even as European leaders endanger their ties with the US to enrich Tehran. Ahead of his meeting with the Europeans in Brussels on Monday, Ali Akhbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency, warned that if Europeans choose to comply with US sanctions and stop purchasing Iranian oil, Iran will ditch the nuclear deal and restore its activities to enrich uranium to 20% purity, something Iran purportedly suspended in the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Salehi told Reuters, “It is very easy for us to go back to what we were before – even to a better position. We can start the 20% enrichment activity. We can increase the amount of enriched uranium.”

Maybe the Europeans are working to undermine US sanctions and save the Iranian economy because they are afraid of the Iranians. But since Europe’s intense efforts to appease Iran have been met with continued Iranian terrorism, it is irrational to think that repeating this failed policy will protect them in the future.

As Brian Hook, the US State Department’s Iran policy chief put it to reporters when the Denmark terror plot was revealed, “It is very strange to us to see this Iranian regime would spend so much time trying to keep the Europeans on its side, while at the same time conducting bomb plots and assassination attempts in Europe.”

It’s possible that the Europeans are motivated to work on behalf of Iran against the US by an uncontrollable hatred of US President Donald Trump. Speaking to Britain’s Independent, a senior European diplomat said that the Europeans are empowering Iran so that Trump won’t be able to get the satisfaction of seeing them agree with him that Iran is a threat.

In his words, “We want to play it smartly so that Trump doesn’t say, ‘See, I told you these weak Europeans will eventually understand the real nature of Iran.’”

In other words, according to the quoted diplomat, the Europeans would rather shut their eyes to the reality of Iran’s aggression and empower the terror sponsoring ayatollahs than acknowledge that Trump is right and that Iran poses to danger to Europe that mustn’t be countenanced. And indeed, while the Danes initially recalled their ambassador from Tehran and called on the EU to impose sanctions against Iran in retaliation for the terror plot in Copenhagen, within weeks, the Danish ambassador was back in Tehran and the EU had opted not to impose any sanctions in response to Iran’s terrorist operations in Europe.

Jew hatred is another possible explanation for Europe’s embrace of a regime that calls daily for Israel’s destruction and works directly and through its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies to achieve its murderous goal. CNN’s survey of European Jew hatred, released this week showed yet again that hatred of Jews remains a powerful force for political and social mobilization in Europe today.

As for antisemitism, according to a senior administration official, although Mogherini is the mouthpiece for the EU’s Iran policy, she is not its author, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is.

Mogherini, like the Germans and French, insist that their continued commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal stems from their conviction that the deal is working to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Ahead of the meeting with Salehi on Monday, EU Energy Commissioner Arias Canete said the deal is “crucial for the security of Europe, of the region and the entire world.”

He said the agreement is working to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and that “we do not see any credible peaceful alternative.”

The mendacity of Canete’s statement, and similar ones by Mogherini, is stunning. At least since April 30, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed Iran’s nuclear archive, which Mossad officers seized from a Tehran warehouse in late January, nothing Iran says about its nuclear program or activities can be taken seriously. The very existence of the nuclear archive, and the great efforts the regime took to preserve it made clear that the Iranian regime has never had the slightest interest in curbing, let alone abandoning its ambition to develop a nuclear arsenal. The archive preserved all of the knowledge that Iran amassed since the early 1990s towards the development, testing and deployment of nuclear warheads.

Salehi himself made clear that the nuclear sword of Damocles is still dangling over the world’s throat. Salehi warned the Europeans that if they fail to protect Iran from US sanctions, the consequences will be “ominous.”

“The situation is very unpredictable,” he warned.

The Iranian nuclear archive, Europe’s willingness to provoke an open breach with the Americans to continue transferring money to Iran, and Iran’s own brinksmanship in the face of US sanctions tell us that much of the discourse about the nuclear deal has been misplaced and the purpose of the deal has been misconstrued.

Unlike what we have been told – and what we have been telling ourselves, the deal isn’t a non-proliferation effort. It isn’t geared toward blocking Iran’s nuclear operations.

The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is nothing more than a payoff. Salehi admitted as much this week when he said, “If we cannot sell our oil and we don’t enjoy financial transactions, then I don’t think keeping the deal will benefit us anymore.”

The Obama administration, in conjunction with the EU, concluded a deal which no one ever signed. It involved the US and Europe, (along with Russia and China) transferring billions of dollars to Iran in cash, providing Iran with billions of dollars of sanctions relief and agreeing to business deals worth additional billions to the Iranian economy.

In exchange, Iran offered them nothing.

It is impossible to credit any of Iran’s purported actions to contain or curtail its nuclear activities because the agreement contains no effective inspections mechanism. Under the JCPOA, Iran can avoid UN inspections of its nuclear installations by simply calling them military installations.

The purpose of the deal then wasn’t to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons at all. This is why then-president Barack Obama, then-secretary of state John Kerry, their underlings and their EU colleagues couldn’t care less when, during the negotiations, Israel provided proof that Iran couldn’t be trusted and that the agreement as concluded wouldn’t prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. This is also why the Europeans responded to Israel’s seizure of Iran’s nuclear archive with a shrug of their shoulders. They aren’t arms controllers. They are appeasers.

The purpose of the nuclear deal was to enrich and empower the Iranian regime. And in this context, Iran’s determination to leave the deal if the dollars and euros stop flowing is entirely reasonable. So, too, the Europeans are right that to preserve the deal, they must do everything in their power to continue enriching Iran.

Once we understand the actual nature of the deal, we can recognize the true danger of Europe’s pro-Iranian, anti-American actions.

Israel and many Arab states have made clear that they will go to war against Iran if that is the only way that Iran can be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The purpose of the US economic sanctions is to achieve the goal of blocking Iran’s nuclear efforts without war. If the Iranian economy collapses, or if the regime is overthrown, or both, Iran will likely abandon its nuclear weapons program without war. If Europe is successful in scuttling US sanctions, the likelihood of a major war will rise tremendously.

In response to the Wall Street Journal report, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told the Jerusalem Post’s Benjamin Weinthal that the US will contemplate sanctions against French and German entities that seek to evade sanctions against Iran.

In his words, “The US will consider sanctions on those entities participating in these tactics.”
Maybe the Europeans are motivated to stand with Rouhani and his fellow genocidal antisemites in the Iranian regime out of hatred for Trump or for America as a whole. Maybe they’re motivated by Jew hatred.

Maybe they simply want to keep paying off the Iranians in the hopes that Iranian regime terrorists will continue to focus their terror efforts in Europe on Iranian dissidents and Jews and leave them alone.

Maybe they are motivated by old-fashioned greed.

Whatever is motivating them, the time has come to make them pay a price for their hostile behavior. Because if they aren’t forced to back down, by US sanctions and other means, then the world will pay a devastating price later, in the form of a war that might have been prevented were it not for European perfidy, prejudice and cowardice.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post. 


Caroline Glick

Source: http://carolineglick.com/europe-beats-irans-war-drums/

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Dore Gold Asserts Israel’s Legal Rights to the Golan Heights at International Meeting in Moscow - Amb. Dore Gold

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by Amb. Dore Gold

Israel was acting in self-defense in the Six Day War.

Dore Gold told the Valdai conference in Moscow on February 19, 2018:

Israel has been taking a strong stand, and will continue to take a strong stand, against the conversion of Syria into a satellite state of Iran, which would be used as a launching pad for aggression against the northern part of my country. As a result, we are prepared to take measures, and active measures, against the supply of advanced weaponry to Iranian proxy forces like Hizbullah, which could alter aspects of the military balance. We have also been concerned about the deployment of a Shiite expeditionary army under Iranian command, made up of Iraqi, Afghan, and other troops along Israel’s northern border, which would be backed by Iranian air and naval bases, which we understand are being planned at the present time.

Let me close, since I’m surveying the Syrian situation, with one last point. I know in this conference we’re looking at different futures for different countries, but regardless of what happens in Syria, and regardless of what happens with the question of the Syrian Kurds, it’s important to stress that from the point of view of Israel, in the southern part of that area, the Golan Heights will remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Vitaly Naumkin:^* Dore Gold, I’ll start with your last statement. In my view, this statement strongly contradicts international law about… What I mean is that what you said about the Golan contradicts international law, both international law and rational thinking about what’s going on, and how the issue can be resolved. Do you really think that the best way to deal with the security of Israel (which is, of course understandable in this part of your world) is to annex Syrian territory in the Golan Heights? You remember that there were very fruitful negotiations in the days of Hafez al-Assad between Syria and Israel, and it was almost 90% agreed. So why are you now saying that it will never come back to Syria? And what do you think about abiding by international law norms about that?

Dore Gold: On the issue, you mentioned international law.  Well I’ll tell you, as somebody who has to appear a great deal on British and American television, I hear the words “international law” used quite frequently. I would just tell you the basis of my saying that our claim to the Golan Heights is not in violation of international law, and I’ll be very, very brief. Great international lawyers, after the 1967 Six-Day War, drew a distinction between wars of self-defense and wars of aggression. Taking territory in a war of aggression is a violation of international law. Asserting your rights to territory in a war of self-defense is a whole different story, and the source I recommend one turn to is the writing of Stephen Schwebel, who was president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Before he reached that position, he wrote an article in the American Journal of International Law. True, it is a United States publication, but it is respected worldwide, and he made that distinction. Now you could say, “Well, how do we know? In the Six-Day War, Israel was maybe an aggressor.” This takes us to the dark days of the Cold War, but the Soviet Union sought to have Israel branded as the aggressor after the Six-Day War. They tried it in the General Assembly, but they failed. They tried it in the Security Council, but they failed because it was generally understood by the international community that Israel was acting out of self-defense, and therefore our claim to the Golan Heights is on very strong legal grounds. We’re not going to expand on that, but we are not oblivious to international law. We seek to fulfill international law.

* * *

Note

* Vitaly Naumkin is a Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Advisor to President Putin on Syria.

Ambassador Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Source: http://jcpa.org/video/dore-gold-asserts-israels-legal-rights-to-the-golan-heights-at-international-meeting-in-moscow/

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Fog of war can't conceal Hezbollah's plotting - Yoav Limor

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by Yoav Limor

A second tunnel discovered under the Israel-Lebanon border and a border clash between IDF troops and Hezbollah operatives prove the threat on the northern frontier is very real

IDF troops near the Israel-Lebanon border over the weekend
Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit 

Northern Israel was covered by thick fog during the course of ‎the weekend with near-zero visibility. The ‎rain came and went, mostly drizzling and ‎turning everything that is not concrete into mud. ‎

Someone just passing through would probably be ‎unable to tell anything was wrong or that the entire area ‎was on edge. The partial military restrictions ‎imposed on a section of the border when Operation ‎Northern Shield was launched last week have already ‎been lifted, and nothing could be said for a military ‎presence beyond the sporadic military vehicle ‎driving around. For all intents and purposes, this ‎was just another rainy Saturday in northern Israel. ‎

This facade, however, successfully hid the military's nonstop ‎efforts to ‎neutralize Hezbollah terror tunnels snaking under ‎the Israel-Lebanon border.‎

The decision to continue the search for tunnels over ‎the weekend was unorthodox, and not only because it ‎involved operations on Shabbat. The work was hindered ‎by the stormy weather, but the complex engineering ‎and logistics effort involved in this intense ‎operation never waned. If anything, the IDF kept ‎pushing and everyone – from GOC Northern Command ‎Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick to the last special combat ‎engineering soldier deployed on the ground – seemed ‎to be accelerating the pace.‎

The Israeli operation is currently underway in several locations ‎simultaneously. One of them is a tunnel running ‎under the northern town of Metula and on Saturday ‎afternoon, another significant tunnel was ‎discovered. ‎

A security incident interrupted the work on Saturday ‎when IDF commandos securing the operation came ‎across three Hezbollah operatives trying to exploit ‎the fog to steal technical equipment. The troops ‎opened fire and the three fled, but the incident ‎stressed the prudence of increasing military ‎deployment along the border, as the threat is very ‎real. ‎

Hezbollah may be biding its time quietly at the moment, but it very well may retaliate – not just verbally (though Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is sure to give a fiery speech eventually), but also physically, in the battlefield. There is real concern ‎that Hezbollah operatives could booby-trap one of the ‎tunnels, use the weather to plant roadside bombs or ‎try to target the Israeli troops with sniper fire. ‎

These scenarios are passed on to the soldiers in ‎every security briefing. Anyone who scoffed at the fact that this military activity was labeled an "operation" is welcome to ‎visit the border and see how palpable the threat actually is.‎

The military effort on the ground is only part of ‎the overall effort. In the background, the Israeli ‎Air Force is gearing up for potential escalation and ‎Military Intelligence is fully engaged as well. ‎

Another important aspect is the international diplomatic effort, where Israel engages in ‎massive public diplomacy. ‎Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been briefing ‎world leaders on the issue since last week, ‎including – and perhaps most importantly – Russian ‎President Vladimir Putin.‎

The United Nations Security Council is expected to ‎discuss a draft resolution condemning Lebanon on ‎Monday, over the fact that it turns a blind eye to ‎Hezbollah's activities, and Israel would like to see ‎Russia refrain from using its veto power on the ‎issue.‎

Israel would like to see international pressure on the Lebanese government stir up a ‎public debate in the country and prompt criticism of ‎the Shiite terrorist group despite the considerable ‎political power it wields. Lebanon has so far ‎remained indifferent, but it is doubtful whether ‎Beirut could keep that up for long. Operation ‎Northern Shield is expected to last several weeks, ‎and the daily media attention to the issue will turn ‎the spotlight on Lebanon's actions or lack thereof‎. ‎

Still, nothing essential is likely to change, ‎except, of course, for the fact that Israel has deprived ‎Hezbollah of a major strategic asset. This cannot be ‎taken lightly, as one need not have a particularly ‎wild imagination to understand what Hezbollah had ‎planned for Metula and other Israeli communities ‎along the border. Some of the tunnels were on the ‎verge of becoming operational in the coming weeks. If an attack had been launched using those tunnels, the first question for the ‎political echelon and the IDF would have been, "If ‎you knew, why didn't you do anything?"‎

Yoav Limor

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/12/09/fog-of-war-cant-conceal-hezbollahs-plotting/

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Why “pro-Israel” is “pro-America” - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

The truth is that Trump is right to view Israel as central to American policies in relation to the Middle East. The problem with his remarks is that he did not explain why.

Some Israelis were concerned when they read President Donald Trump’s recent statements to the media about the reasons for his support of Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Trump linked his support for the Saudi regime, and his unwillingness to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for the Jamal Khashoggi killing, to Israel.

Trump said of the Saudis, “They’ve been a great ally. Without them, Israel would be in a lot more trouble. We need to have a counterbalance to Iran.”

Trump added, “It’s very important to have Saudi Arabia as an ally, very important to maintain that relationship … if we’re going to stay in that part of the world. Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world? One reason to is Israel. Oil is becoming less and less of a reason because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve every produced. So you know, all of the sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.”

As senior Israeli defense analyst Ron Ben Yishai wrote on Thursday, Saudi Arabia needs Israel just as much, if not more than, Israel needs Saudi Arabia. Iran and its nuclear program threaten Saudi Arabia even more acutely than they threaten Israel. Saudi Arabia is across the Persian Gulf from Iran and is weaker than Iran. If Iran develops a nuclear arsenal, it could destroy the Saudi regime.

Ben Yishai noted that Saudi Arabia’s greatest potential assistance to Israel would come in the form of permission for Israeli fighter jets to overfly Saudi airspace en route to bombing Iran’s nuclear installations.

But, he notes, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Gulf states arguably have more to gain and less to lose from an Israeli strike on Iran than Israel does. In other words, if the Saudis were to permit the Israeli Air Force (AIF) to traverse their airspace en route to Iran, they would be doing so more for their own benefit than for Israel’s.

Saudi Arabia is apparently playing a major role in the thaw in relations between Israel and a growing number of Arab and Muslim states. According to a report in the Arabic media, MBS and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah a-Sisi have decided to encourage Arab states to trade with Israel. That is good for Israel but it also provides political space for the Saudis to work with Israel to thwart Iran’s hegemonic and nuclear ambitions in the region.

This, then, brings us back to Trump’s statement.

Israelis are relating a twofold concern about Trump’s remarks. First, he appears to be saying that Israel would be helpless without the Saudi regime, and that the U.S. needs to retain its close ties to Saudi Arabia to secure Israel.

This is not the case. True, Israel and Saudi Arabia gain from their alliance with the U.S. And the potential for Israeli-Saudi relations has increased since Trump embraced them both as key allies. But the two sides reached out to each other before Trump became president. The Saudi-Israeli partnership began in response to then-President Barack Obama’s decision to appease Iran at their expense through the nuclear deal.

The second – and deeper – concern Israelis are expressing in relation to Trump’s statement is that he appears to be saying that the U.S. is only in the Middle East to protect Israel.

As Ben Yishai wrote, it is likely that some of the American servicemen who are deployed today in multiple theaters in the region will be killed in action at some time, in some places. Ben Yishai argued that Trump’s statement effectively says that “the American military presence is necessary mainly because of Israel.” And as a consequence, when American servicemen in Syria, or Iraq, or Jordan, or elsewhere are killed, “many in the United States will blame Israel for the[ir] deaths.”

The truth is that Trump is right to view Israel as central to American policies in relation to the Middle East. The problem with his remarks is that he did not explain why. He did not point out the roots of Israel’s significance in U.S. calculations, for example.

It is worth explaining that now.

The root of Israel’s enduring significance to the U.S. is found in the fact that the Jewish state shares all of America’s core interests in relation to the region.

The first U.S. core interest in the Middle East is to prevent any competing superpower from taking over. The U.S. does not want China or Russia to supplant it as the preeminent superpower in the region, both because such an event would harm the U.S. economically, and because it would make America’s rivals significantly stronger and the U.S. significantly weaker.

Israel shares this U.S. interest. Israel can develop close ties with both Russia and China on a transactional level based on episodic common interests. But unlike the U.S., Russia and China do not share Israel’s permanent perception of its interests the way the U.S. does.

Along these lines, the second permanent U.S. interest in the Middle East is to prevent local powers from dominating the region, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, or acquiring intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Israel’s acute concern with all of these issues has caused it to develop intelligence agencies second to none in gathering and acting on intelligence relating to all of these issues — not only in Israel, but worldwide. Israel’s Mossad’s seizure of Iran’s nuclear archive in Tehran this past January is a testament to Israel’s capabilities.

The Middle East remains the world’s largest incubator for terrorism and the largest exporter of terrorists. Israel’s unhappy distinction is that it has been fighting these forces since before it was established. The U.S. and Israel share a key interest in destroying terror groups operating in the Middle East to prevent them from attacking in the region and throughout the world.

Israel’s intelligence capabilities have foiled Iranian terror attacks around the world and have exposed Iranian agents engaged in purchasing dual-use technologies to advance Iran’s nuclear work.

The final interest that Israel and the U.S. share is enabling the smooth flow of oil from the region to ensure the stability of global oil prices — and, through them, the stability of the global economy.

Israel’s interest is not that of a supplier, or even that of a purchaser, but as a victim of Arab oil power.

In 1973, the Arab members of OPEC imposed an oil embargo on the U.S. and other states that supported Israel during the 1973 Arab war against Israel. In response to the embargo, western European nations largely abandoned their previous alliances with Israel. The U.S. maintained its support for Israel, but adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism — even when it was directed against Americans — and of providing only conditional support for Israel in its wars with its Arab neighbors.

Given this last interest, the strategic implications of America’s recent restoration of its position as the largest global oil producer become clearer. Trump’s essential insight — that reduced dependence on Arab oil is good for the U.S. — does not, by itself, spell out how that reduced dependence makes the U.S. safer or stronger.

Reduced dependence on Arab oil frees the U.S. to stand up for itself and its interests more forthrightly than it was able to do when the Arab states could impose oil embargoes at will and raise or lower prices whenever they wished.

The implication, as far as Israel is concerned, is that for the first time, perhaps since the 1973 OPEC embargo, the U.S. is today free to stand with Israel. Since they share the same permanent interests in the region, the stronger America is, the better off Israel is, and the stronger Israel is, the better off America is.

America may yet find a way to diminish its presence in the region. But the key to accomplishing that goal is to ensure that Israel defeats its enemies and develops and maintains its ability to protect itself, by itself – and so defend American interests — on a permanent basis.

Originally published at Breitbart.com. 


Caroline Glick

Source: http://carolineglick.com/why-pro-israel-is-pro-america/

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Comey’s testimony imitated Sgt. Schultz with amnesia - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

It is very curious – an aggressive prosecutor might say suspicious – that someone with his track record would claim under oath to have known so little and forgotten so much.

How on earth did a man with such a terrible memory, and so ignorant of the operations of an agency he headed, manage to have the stellar career that James Comey enjoyed (until Donald Trump fired him). In testimony Friday, like fictional comedic icon Sergeant Schultz, a Nazi prison camp guard, he claimed he knew nothing, and what he didn’t know, he forgot:



Rep. Mark Meadows totaled up the denials:

‘I don’t know’ - 166 times
'I don’t remember' - 71 times
‘I don’t recall’ - 8 times

James Comey, we are told by many people including conservatives like Andrew McCarthy, is a very smart fellow, an enormously talented administrator. He certainly had an amazing career in the federal government, and as a senior executive at Lockheed Marti, the nation’s largest defense contractor for a few years, earning millions of dollars. The investigations he claimed ignorance of were being run out of FBI headquarters, which is very unusual. It would be understandable for Comey to be ignorant of investigations run out of a field office, but this was under his nose and direct supervision. 

It is very curious – an aggressive prosecutor might say suspicious – that someone with his track record would claim under oath to have known so little and forgotten so much. Especially a man formerly charged with being the top law enforcement officer in the country.

Image credit: screen grab from YouTube video by Dave Tonnes

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/comeys_testimony_imitated_sgt_schultz_with_amnesia.html

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PM pushes bill to expose donors behind nonprofit organizations - Yehuda Shlezinger

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by Yehuda Shlezinger

Bill aims to prevent Left from teaming with foreign donors ‎who reportedly plan to spend millions on campaigns to ‎convince the public to vote Netanyahu out of office

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly ‎pushing a bill that would mandate nonprofit ‎organizations involved in political activities, ‎especially during election time, to make their list ‎of donors public.‎

Netanyahu has spoken on the matter with the heads of ‎the coalition factions after learning that the Left ‎has managed to secure a long list of foreign donors ‎who plan to spend millions on campaigns aimed at ‎convincing the public to vote him out of office. ‎

The prime minister is said to be concerned that these ‎donors would partner with various nonprofit ‎organizations to disguise their actions, and ‎believes enacting legislation that would mandate ‎transparency on the nonprofits' part would prevent that.‎

‎"You could, for example, register a nonprofit under ‎the name 'Zionism 2019' and use it to disseminate ‎anti-Right and anti-Netanyahu propaganda during the ‎election campaign," a coalition official explained.‎

‎"What this law would do is expose who is behind it, ‎so hypothetically speaking, any ad by such an ‎association would have to also say, 'Sponsored by ‎George Soros.'"‎

This bill stands to join two other pending ‎legislative proposals, the so-called "V15 bill" and ‎‎"Soros bill."‎

During the previous elections, the Victory 2015 ‎campaign explicitly urged voters to replace the ‎government, but its allegedly clear ties to ‎the leftist parties, as well as the obscure origins ‎of its multi-million dollar funding, have ‎prompted suspicions that its activities were, in ‎fact, illegal.‎

The bill seeking to curb V15 and its ilk is ‎sponsored by Likud MK Yoav Kisch. It seeks to ‎define, for the first time, which "civilian bodies ‎active during election time" should be subject to ‎existing campaign financing laws, including the ‎required transparency as to the identity of any ‎donors. ‎

The Soros bill, named for the Hungarian-American ‎billionaire, is sponsored by Likud MK Miki Zohar and ‎seeks to make it difficult for left-wing ‎organizations to receive foreign funding from what ‎it calls "anti-Israel entities" that are "blatantly ‎anti-Semitic, inciting or hostile toward Israel."‎

Zohar named the bill for Soros over the latter's ‎known donations to organizations such as the New ‎Israel Fund, the controversial human rights group ‎B'Tselem, and Breaking the Silence ‎ – an advocacy ‎group which is dedicated to exposing alleged ‎wrongdoings by the IDF.‎

Yehuda Shlezinger

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/12/09/pm-pushes-bill-to-expose-donors-of-nonprofits-%e2%80%8ethat-campaign-in-elections/

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Portland is a Sh*thole - Paul Joseph Watson

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by Paul Joseph Watson

Portland: Capital of Antifa, degeneracy and depression.

In this new video, Paul Joseph Watson explains why Portland is a Sh*thole. Don't miss it!




Paul Joseph Watson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272136/paul-joseph-watson-video-portland-shthole-paul-joseph-watson

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So Much Irony it’s Mag[a]netic - Clarice Feldman

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by Clarice Feldman

While the Mueller investigation winds down with no evidence of collusion, Hillary and her friends seem to be not so lucky.

There’s a 12-part series of images circulating on the internet titled “Ink Blot Test For People with Trump Derangement Syndrome” which shows pictures of a dozen nondescript ink blots all of which those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome call “Russian Collusion”. That’s about as close as they’ll get to it, because as the Mueller investigation winds down, still with no evidence of collusion, Hillary and her friends seem to be not so lucky. The lawbreaking she (and they) evaded penalty for seems finally closer to a reckoning.

Flynn, Manafort, and Cohen

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

AFTER TWO YEARS AND MILLIONS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS (and a cost of over $30,000,000), NO COLLUSION!

Mueller’s multimillion dollars peck, sniff, and smear operation seems to be winding down with a whimper, not a bang, despite the media’s efforts to portray it otherwise. In the long-postponed sentencing recommendation respecting retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mueller recommended little or no jail time. Typical of the TDS crowd is Norm Eisen, former Obama official, to whom (relying on his reading of the ink blot -- in this case, the redactions), the Flynn sentencing memo means that Mueller is hot on the trail of collusion:

The sentencing memo and its addendum -- which recommend that Flynn receive little to no prison time -- appear to identify three matters on which Flynn helped the special counsel investigation. One is openly described: collusion. The memo states that Flynn has assisted with the investigation into any “links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump.” No surprise there; Flynn himself was charged primarily because he had lied to the FBI about his own contacts with Russia. The memo’s matter-of-fact description of Mueller’s collusion review, and Flynn’s help with it, clearly undercuts Trump’s refrains of “no collusion” and “collusion is not a crime.” Those mantras have been less frequent of late, and with good reason; I have argued that both are wrong, legally and factually. The sentencing memo, in its own low-key way, signals that Mueller is taking the collusion seriously and pushing forward with it.

To me (and Sara Carter, among others) it shows quite the opposite:
She quotes Representative Mark Meadows and others to draw her conclusions that there was no collusion evidence Flynn could or did provide:

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, who has been at the forefront of Congressional investigations into the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe, told this reporter late Tuesday that it’s what’s not in Mueller’s recommendations that reveal “they didn’t have anything in the sentencing guidelines that show Flynn colluded with Russia.”
“It took nearly two years for Robert Mueller to come to the same conclusion that President Trump got to several months after Flynn was charged -- that Flynn is a good man and didn’t collude,” said Meadows. Meadows noted that the term “substantial cooperation” is a legal phrase that is necessary to include in the sentencing recommendation “in order to get a reduced sentence from the court.”
“It’s not so much used as an adjective, as it is a noun,” said Meadows.

Sara also reminds how weak was the claim that Flynn lied to cover up collusion ever was and how shoddy the investigation and investigators were:

Flynn was interviewed by FBI Special Agents Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok on Jan. 24, 2017 about conversations he had with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. According to former FBI Director James Comey, the agents did not believe Flynn was lying during their interview with him but later Mueller charged him none-the-less and eventually Flynn pled guilty in December 2017 to one count of lying.
Strzok, who not only was charged with the Russia investigation into Trump, was also part of Mueller’s Special Counsel probe. He was eventually removed from his role in the Special Counsel’s Office after it was discovered he had sent thousands of anti-Trump text messages to his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, Page, who was a close confidant of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, retired from the FBI and struck a deal to testify before Congress in July. Her explosive testimony revealed that the FBI did not have any evidence as of May 2017 that anyone in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. McCabe was fired from the FBI for lying multiple times to investigators about his contacts with the media and leaking to the media.
Strzok was fired by the FBI after an extensive investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed his anti-Trump sentiments and as more information surfaced about his extensive roles in both the Clinton server and Trump Russia investigations. Horowitz is currently investigating the FBI’s handling of the Trump Russia investigation but his investigation isn’t expected to be concluded until next Spring.

In any event, the claim was made for the benefit of idiots who do not comprehend that it is normal and necessary for transition team members to communicate with foreign leaders during that period between administrations and to further loser Hillary’s effort to defeat Trump and later to undermine his presidency.

Manafort

This week Mueller filed a pleading, contending that Paul Manafort breached his plea agreement with the special counsel when he lied to them. Again, the pleading was full of redactions making it difficult to ascertain what the heck this is about. Perhaps the only way we’ll find out is if Manafort contests these claims and there is a hearing where Mueller will have to prove Manafort’s statements were false. All we can ascertain from the pleadings per Hans von Spakovsky is this:

Mueller contends that Manafort lied about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik and about a “$125,000 wire transfer to a firm working for Manafort; ‘information pertinent to another Department of Justice investigation’; and ‘Manafort’s contact with Administration officials.’

There is some reason to believe the non-cooperation claim relates to his dealings with the Podesta Group, the lobbying outfit founded by Clinton campaign manager and longtime confidant John Podesta and his brother Tony, which was deeply involved in the Ukraine business (including the Uranium One sale) about which Manafort was charged. 

Cohen

Paul Sperry tweeted after the sentence recommendation for Michael Cohen:

“Special Counsel Mueller finally acknowledges the presidents personal lawyer never actually made contact with Putin or even Putin’s press secretary in the defunct Moscow real estate project.”

Spakovsky scans the pleading and offers up several observations, among them these:

[The memo] throws doubt on the idea that Cohen has secretly provided some kind of undisclosed information or evidence to the special counsel that bears on what is supposed to be the focus of Mueller’s investigation: whether there was any unlawful collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials to change the outcome of the 2016 election. [snip] Yet it cannot be emphasized enough that once again, as with prior documents filed by the Justice Department and the special counsel dealing with other defendants, there is no information in Cohen’s sentencing memorandum about the issue of possible Trump-Russia election collusion. [snip] What comes next? We simply don’t know, because Mueller has not lifted the curtain hiding much of his activities. But as of now, from what we know on the public record, Mueller has failed to prove the Trump-Russia collusion that he was appointed to investigate 19 months ago.

Hillary

It appears we are not the only people furious at the way the Department of State and Department of Justice have covered up for Hillary Clinton’s patent abuse of her private emails for official business, creating security breaches and evading the requirements of accountability through the Freedom of Information Act’s procedures. This week the wonderful Judicial Watch outfit persuaded a U.S. District Court Judge that it was time to bring down the hammer on this wrongdoing. The case began in 2014 in a suit by Judicial Watch to obtain Hillary’s Benghazi-related emails. These agencies responded with a deficient search to effect a settlement. Ruling these agencies’ conduct “Smacks of outrageous misconduct” and collusion to “hoodwink” and to "skirt scrutiny" of Hillary he ordered them to reopen a portion of their email inquiry. He said -- and we certainly agree -- that Hillary’s use of her private email server was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency’

But there was more trouble for Hillary and Bill on the horizon. Representative Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) revealed that three people have come forward to the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations with hundreds of pages of evidence evincing potential wrongdoing -- including pay to play and allegations of quid-pro-quo promises to Clinton Foundation donors.

Donations to the Clinton Foundations have dropped off substantially since Hillary lost the election and had no favors to grant. There was a 58 percent drop from the $62.9 million it received the previous year.

Indeed, the Clinton road show is having such difficulty selling tickets that they are practically giving them away on Groupon and yet the venues they chose have been very sparsely attended.

In the meantime, prosecutors working for U.S. attorney John Huber (designated by former Attorney General Sessions to investigate the foundation) reportedly requested documents from MDA Analytics, LLC, which had been investigating the Foundation, and MDA contacted the IRS, the Justice Department and the FBI with evidence it had uncovered.

In addition, The Hill reported that a whistleblower submission filed with the FBI and IRS in August 2017 included internal legal reviews that the Clinton Foundation conducted between 2008 and 2011.
Those reviews raised concerns about legal compliance and improper mingling of personal and charity business.
According to the Hill report, MDA investigators met with Clinton Foundation CFO Andrew Kessel in late November 2016.
During the meeting, Kessel said that “one of the biggest problems was [former President Bill] Clinton’s commingling and use of business and donated funds and his personal expenses.” A separate interview memo stated that Bill Clinton “mixes and matches his personal business with that of the foundation. Many people within the foundation have tried to caution him about this but he does not listen, and there really is no talking to him.”

Stormy Daniels

Several TDS sufferers set up Go Fund Me sites to help Stormy Daniels file a defamation suit against the president. She lost that case, and now Trump is seeking $800,000 in legal fees and expenses from her. So the contributors to this nonsense are likely to end up paying Trump for her court loss.

Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti also appears to be busted, this time by his estranged wife, and this week announced he’s dropping his plan to run for president.

Clarice Feldman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/so_much_irony_its_maganetic.html

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