Monday, February 7, 2022

The Anti-Defamation League and Amnesty International - Caroline Glick

 

by Caroline Glick

It works out that after years of “careful study,” Amnesty’s entirely professional “researchers,” determined that Israel has no right to exist.

 


One of the curiouser responses to Amnesty International’s Israel Apartheid report this week came from the Anti-Defamation League. Monday, the heads of Amnesty held a press conference in Israel’s capital Jerusalem. In it they presented the main “findings” of the “investigation” they conducted regarding the status of Israel’s existence.

It works out that after years of “careful study,” Amnesty’s entirely professional “researchers,” determined that Israel has no right to exist. The Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews after two thousand years of homeless wanderings, is a type of apartheid. Israel’s Jewish identity is apartheid, they said.

The purchase of private land by Jews in sovereign Israel and in Judea and Samaria is apartheid. Use of government land by Jews is apartheid. Enforcement of the laws of the state towards non-Jews – you guessed it – is apartheid in the eyes of Amnesty’s hardnosed, totally unbiased “investigators.”

Amnesty concluded as well that since Israel is an apartheid state that has no right to exist, Israel is guilty of crimes against humanity and, (it almost goes without saying), of war crimes. Unlike the wretched, cruel, greedy and avaricious Jews, the Palestinians are as pure as the driven snow. The word “terror” only appears three times in Amnesty’s 210-page tome and terror is never mentioned as a means to explain any defensive action that Israel has undertaken.

As was to be expected, Amnesty used its new “Jews are Criminals” report to renew its call for Israel and its citizens to be tried for war crimes before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The “human rights” group also rode its blood libel wave to renew its call for economic sanctions and an arms embargo against Israel. Amnesty capped its bloodlust off with a call for Israel’s destruction through the immigration of millions of hostile foreign-born Arabs allegedly descended from Arabs who left Israel during the 1948 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state.

Amnesty’s report was roundly condemned as anti-Semitic propaganda by Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Jewish groups in the U.S. and worldwide. You don’t need to be an anti-Semitism researcher (or a Jew) to recognize that Amnesty’s report flowed from the same hate-infested swamp as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

And this brings us to the ADL’s response. The Anti-Defamation League, which has an annual budget of around $100 million is supposed to be the leading Jewish organization in the Diaspora in the fight against Jew hatred. But Amnesty’s declaration of war against the Jewish state placed the ADL in a bind. Just a bit over a year ago, the ADL defended Amnesty.

In October 2020, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced his plan to list Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam as anti-Semitic organizations due to their efforts to advance the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. Pompeo’s plan was in keeping with the Trump administration’s overall policy for fighting anti-Semitism. In December 2019, then President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that provided civil rights protection to Jewish students persecuted by BDS campaigns on their campuses.

Given the central role Amnesty and other phony human rights groups play in the political war for the destruction of the largest Jewish community in the world, Pompeo’s planned move was not just reasonable, it was imperative. But rather than applaud him for his resolve, the ADL attacked Pompeo and his plan.

When word broke that Pompeo was about the designate the three groups as anti-Semitic, the ADL released a statement aimed at undermining and blocking his move. The statement declared, “We oppose broadly applying the anti-Semitism label to these human rights organizations; doing so is neither accurate nor helpful to the fight against anti-Semitism. Rather, this move would politicize the fight against anti-Semitism.”

A month later Pompeo made it the official policy of the State Department to treat organizations that support BDS as anti-Semitic groups. But by that time, Trump had lost his reelection bid, and the wind had come out of the sails. Pompeo’s statement did not mention which specific groups were anti-Semitic. So thanks in large part to the ADL, Amnesty and its anti-Semitic comrades dodged the bullet.

On the surface, the ADL’s condemnation of the Amnesty report could have been written by the Zionist Organization of America. But a close look at the ADL’s response makes clear that the organization which is supposed to lead the struggle against anti-Semitism, hasn’t changed its position since it defended Amnesty from Pompeo’s charge of anti-Semitism.

The ADL had a great deal of criticism over Amnesty’s report, but it engaged in circus-style contortionism to avoid saying the plain truth: Amnesty’s report was anti-Semitic.

As the ADL put it, Amnesty’s report was “an effort to demonize Israel and undermine its legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state. In an environment of rising anti-Jewish hate, this type of report is not only inaccurate but also irresponsible and likely will lead to intensified anti-Semitism around the world.”

So the report wasn’t anti-Semitic per se. It was simply irresponsible. Amnesty didn’t factor in how its blood libels might be interpreted by people who (unlike Amnesty) actually hate Jews.

The ADL statement maintained its line – that Amnesty was irresponsible, not bigoted against Jews — through to the end. The statement concluded, “Amnesty International’s rhetoric is irresponsible. These are not simply abstract words but the kind of spurious charges that, time and again, have placed Jews in danger around the world.”

There are two explanations that pop to mind for why an organization that is supposed to be dedicated to fighting Jew hatred turned itself into a joke to dismiss a call for the annihilation of the largest Jewish community in the world (Israel) by a massively powerful international organization as merely “irresponsible rhetoric.”

The first way to explain the ADL’s behavior is that this is an attempted cover up. The fact is that the ADL facilitated the Amnesty report, as well as similar reports published by Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem last year. All three reports libeled and demonized Israel as an “apartheid state.”

When the ADL torpedoed Pompeo’s plan to designate Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam as anti-Semitic organizations, it gave them a carte blanche to escalate their anti-Semitic campaigns. Had the ADL put aside its progressive politics and hatred for Trump for just a moment to support rather than undermine Pompeo, it is highly likely that these groups would have reconsidered their plans to escalate their war against the Jews. The cost-benefit analysis of siding with terrorists and Nazi-like Jew haters from Ramallah to Tehran against the Jews would likely have looked very different once the U.S. State Department designated these anti-Semitic groups as anti-Semitic groups. Moreover had Pompeo gone through with his plan, even if Amnesty et. al, had stayed on course and published their apartheid slanders, the impact of those slanders would have been a weak flutter of the waves they are making today.

And the Jews – from Israel’s Foreign Ministry to the last Jewish group in the Diaspora — would have had a lot better ammunition in their efforts to discredit the tsunami of lies flowing out from these groups. Given the ADL’s role in facilitating the massive escalation of the faux human rights’ communities’ war against the Jews, it makes sense that it has decided to pretend that nothing is happening.

Another possible explanation for the ADL’s refusal to acknowledge that Amnesty International is an anti-Semitic organization and that its “Jews are Nazis” report is endemically anti-Semitic is that the ADL has abandoned its mission of fighting anti-Semitism and replaced it with a mission of advancing anti-Semitism – at least of the progressive variety.

This week, Daniel Greenfield from Frontpage Magazine revealed that the ADL hired an activist named Tema Smith to serve as its director of Jewish outreach. Smith’s hire is newsworthy because Smith has a long record of anti-Israel, pro-terror and anti-Jewish postings on social media. In other words, she has a long record of anti-Semitic activism, which Greenfield documented.

Consider a few examples of Smith’s publishing history.

During the Hamas war against Israel in 2014, Smith posted and endorsed an article that justified Hamas’s kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and its massive missile onslaught against Israeli population centers.

In 2020 she wrote, “Here’s the thing: Jews *have* to be ok with Palestinians *explaining* why some turn to terrorism.”

On several occasions, Smith insisted that there is no black anti-Semitism and that it is racist for Jews to claim that there is. She said that Jewish opposition to the deeply anti-Semitic Critical Race Theory stems from Jewish racism.

As for Islamic Jew haters, Smith has on several occasions defended the jihadist who brutally murdered 66-year-old Sarah Halimi, a retired nursery school teacher in her Paris apartment and then threw her out the window.

The ADL’s new Jewish outreach director even attacked the U.S. Holocaust Museum for its criticism of progressive superstar Cong. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez after Cortez obscenely compared detention centers for illegal aliens along the border with Mexico to Nazi concentration camps.

In its squirming condemnation of the Amnesty report, the ADL noted rightly that by negating the Jews’ right to sovereignty within Israel’s 1949 armistice lines, Amnesty “not only delegitimizes the Israeli state enterprise and the Jewish right to self-determination in its historic homeland, but also undermines the vision of a mutually negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will provide security, dignity, and self-determination to both peoples.”

There is no question that this is correct. The new rallying cry of “Israeli Apartheid” now shared by anti-Semitic activists in the West who falsely present themselves as human rights activists and Bedouin terrorists and rioters in the Negev has killed whatever was left of the so-called “two-state solution.” There is only space for one state west of the Jordan River.

The ADL’s pathological refusal to state the truth that Amnesty International and the miserable report it issued this week are anti-Jewish, like its decision to hire Smith the anti-Semite as its outreach director to the Jewish community indicate that in the campaign against the existence of the State of Israel, the ADL is not on the side of the Jews.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick

Source: https://carolineglick.com/the-anti-defamation-league-and-amnesty-international/

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Biden to welcome German Chancellor Scholz to White House, discuss Russia-Ukraine situation - Brooke Singman

 

by Brooke Singman

Scholz, last month, said Germany would help with economic sanctions against Russia in the event of incursion, but said it would not provide "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, leading some to question Germany’s commitment to opposing Russian aggression—particularly amid Germany’s growing dependence on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are expected to talk "significantly" about the situation in Ukraine and Russia during his visit to the White House on Monday, as well as their "shared commitment" in the ongoing diplomatic efforts to encourage Moscow to deescalate tensions and prevent an invasion, a senior administration official said.

The president will welcome Scholz to the White House Monday for his first visit to Washington since being sworn in as chancellor—a visit Biden is "very much looking forward to."

GERMANY'S SOFT STANCE ON RUSSIAN AGGRESSION TOWARD UKRAINE CONCERNS NATO ALLIES

A senior administration official said the president first interacted with Scholz in October, when it was clear he would succeed then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, and said he is looking forward to "getting to know Scholz personally on his first official visit to Washington."

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the debt ceiling during an event in the State Dining Room of the White House, Monday, Oct. 4 in Washington. A California man was arrested in Iowa last week as he was traveling to Washington D.C., after he was found with a "hit list" featuring Biden, former presidents and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the debt ceiling during an event in the State Dining Room of the White House, Monday, Oct. 4 in Washington. A California man was arrested in Iowa last week as he was traveling to Washington D.C., after he was found with a "hit list" featuring Biden, former presidents and Dr. Anthony Fauci. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The visit, the official said, "illustrates the continued importance that the United States places on the bilateral relationship with Germany."

The official said that Biden and Scholz would speak "significantly" about Ukraine and Russia. The official said they would discuss their hope for a diplomatic resolution, while also the potential preparation of "robust sanctions" against Russia should President Vladimir Putin decide to invade Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivers a speech during a meeting of the German federal parliament, Bundestag, at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivers a speech during a meeting of the German federal parliament, Bundestag, at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021.  (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

"We have been coordinating very closely with Germany over the last number of weeks, as w have with other European partners, on the package of swift and severe sanctions we’d put into place in the event of Russian invasion in Ukraine," the official said. "We welcome the unity we’ve been seeing from allies and partners to join with us in imposing swift and severe sanctions if Russia continues its aggression."

Scholz, last month, said Germany would help with economic sanctions against Russia in the event of incursion, but said it would not provide "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, leading some to question Germany’s commitment to opposing Russian aggression—particularly amid Germany’s growing dependence on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline are stored on the premises of the port of Mukran near Sassnitz, Germany, on Dec. 4, 2020. (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File)
Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline are stored on the premises of the port of Mukran near Sassnitz, Germany, on Dec. 4, 2020. (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File) (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File)

But the official said Germany has been "very supportive" of things the United States has done "militarily" with regard to the Russia-Ukraine situation, adding that Germany has been a "significant donor to Ukraine" in areas like humanitarian assistance, and helped to facilitate additional troops.

A senior administration official, in previewing the meeting, said that the Biden administration has had "extensive conversations with the Germans," and said they are "confident Germans share our concerns with Russian aggression."

 

 

 Video

"We will continue to work very closely with Germany to ensure the pipeline does not move forward," the official said.

The Nord Stream 2 has seen a faster development and deployment despite sanctions placed on it by the Trump administration. With those sanctions removed, Germany remains keen to see the pipeline activated sooner than later. 

RUSSIA PLANNING UKRAINE FALSE FLAG AS PRETEXT FOR INVASION: PENTAGON

Scholz has insisted that the pipeline is a "business project," according to German outlet DW.

Biden last year removed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, allowing construction and activation to proceed – a move that some Republican lawmakers criticized for strengthening Russia's position in negotiations with Europe. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pushed for a vote on preemptive sanctions, which Senate Democrats countered with plans to sanction the pipeline only in the event Russia acts on military ambitions in Ukraine. 

The White House underscored this stance, telling Fox News Digital that any preemptive legislation would "have undermined our efforts to deter Russia and removed leverage the United States and our allies and partners possess in this moment all to score political points at home." 

"And it would have come at a moment where we need to be closely united with our European partners, including Germany," an administration spokesperson said. "It makes no sense." 

The plan to allow Russia to develop the pipeline to create leverage in times of political crisis may have backfired as Germany has also rapidly grown dependent on the completion and activation of the pipeline. 

Meanwhile, the official stressed that the United States and Germany are "unified" in terms of awareness of further Russian aggression to Ukraine.

 

 

 Video

"There is absolute agreement that if there is further Russian aggression, then there are things that need to be done," the official said, referring back to a "large package" of economic sanctions, which they said Germany is "on board" with.

"We are absolutely confident Germany shares concerns about Russian aggression, and shares support for Ukrainian sovereignty," the official said, adding that the two leaders are "equally committed to trying to make diplomacy work." 

"Certainly, across the board, there is very much unity of purpose and agreement in the to be able to respond either diplomatically or with sanctions, defending on which path Putin chooses," the official said.

At this point, the Pentagon confirmed last week that the U.S. has intelligence that Russia is likely to "fabricate" a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.

WHITE HOUSE BACKS AWAY FROM CALLING RUSSIAN UKRAINE INVASION ‘IMMINENT’

U.S. officials believe that Russia is planning to "stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian-speaking people to therefore justify their action as part of this fake attack," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby explained.

Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened preparedness, as President Biden and his national security officials weighed where to send troops in Eastern Europe to aid Ukraine as part of a broader NATO effort, while Putin threatened incursion.

First US forces arrive in Europe, Russia poised to launch potential invasion of Ukraine

 

 

  Video

The 3,000 troops include 2,000 from 82nd Airborne Division and 18th Airborne Corps, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and 1,000 who are currently based in Germany. The troops from Germany will deploy to Romania, the 82 Airborne soldiers will go to Poland, and the 18th Airborne forces will go to Germany.

The Pentagon, on Wednesday, said the forces "are not going to fight in Ukraine," but instead would "ensure a robust defense of our NATO allies."

There are already approximately 900 U.S. troops in Romania.

US TO MOVE MORE TROOPS TO NATO'S EASTERN FLANK AMID RUSSIA-UKRAINE SITUATION

The 8,500 troops that Austin put on heightened standby, though, "are not currently being deployed, but remain ready to move if called for the NATO response force or as needed for other contingencies as directed by the secretary or by President Biden," Kirby said Wednesday.

Last week, top Pentagon officials said the build-up of Russian troops along Ukraine's border is the largest since the Cold War, and warned that conflict in Eastern Europe would be "horrific," but stressed that it is "not inevitable," maintaining that there is "still time and space for diplomacy," as the Kremlin continues to threaten further incursion in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, the White House, on Wednesday, backed away from its characterization that Russia’s invasion into Ukraine is "imminent," saying officials "still don’t know" if Putin has "made a decision" on incursion.

Russia has denied it intends to launch an attack. Russian officials said NATO must promise not to allow Ukraine to join the alliance, among other demands, which the United States and NATO have rejected.

Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya on Monday slammed the West, claiming it is trying to will a Ukrainian war into existence. 

Meanwhile, official said Biden and Scholz are also expected to discuss their continued cooperation on ending the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing climate change, and protecting economic prosperity and security. The two leaders are also expected to discuss China—including human rights abuses in the country.

Fox News' Peter Aitken and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-to-welcome-german-chancellor-scholz-to-white-house-discuss-russia-ukraine-situation

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Shabak: Hamas enlisting children of 'family reunifications' - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

Israeli Arabs living in central, southern, Israel are enlisted by Hamas to gather intelligence, carry out terror attacks, Shabak says.

 

Hamas is intentionally enlisting Arab-Israeli citizens who have one Israeli-born parent and one parent born in Gaza or an area under Palestinian Authority (PA) control, Israel Hayom reported.

According to an internal Shabak (Israel Security Agency) document presented to the Israeli government, these Arabs are enlisted to carry out terror and intelligence activities. In some cases, they are enlisted while visiting family in Gaza, utilizing their feelings of identification with Gazans in light of the security tensions.

The data examines a list of PA terror activities within pre-1967 Israel, which occurred in 2020 and up until May 2021. These activities included actual acts of terror or intelligence collection for Hamas, and were sometimes carried out during rounds of fighting with the terror organization.

The activities included the use of weapons - both firearms and others - as well as the collection of information on the IDF's activities and the movement of its forces. In addition, Hamas demanded that these young people report where rockets fell within Israel. In some cases, the terror attacks were carried out.

The Israeli citizens enlisted lived, among other locations, in Rehovot, Lod, and Bedouin settlements in the Negev. One of Shabak's conclusions was that specifically among the second generation from family reunifications, there is a willingness to give up the advantages that living in Israel offers over living in Gaza. The Shabak analysis found that the second generation often has a split identity, with them identifying as Israelis while at the same time identifying with their families in Gaza. This complexity causes some of them to act on behalf of Hamas, more than Arabs who have two Israeli parents.

This data is in line with 12 incidents in the past decade in which descendants of family reunifications were involved in terror attacks, as accomplices or terrorists. Among others, a terrorist whose mother is from Gaza murdered IDF soldier Ron Kokia in 2017 near Be'er Sheva, and a resident of Deir al Balah who has Israeli citizenship was enlisted as a terrorist to the Islamic Jihad's infrastructure for the purpose of carrying out a terror attack at an event hall and kidnapping a soldier.

 

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321854

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Palestinian Authority Breaks Its Promise to Clean Up Its Textbooks - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

What the European Union can do about it.

 


Every year the PA promises the EU that it will clean up its textbooks, to revise or replace them, because of their antisemitic content, and every year it turns out that nothing has been changed, yet it still receives its funding from the EU. This year may be different. A report on the latest EU-PA contretemps is here: “PA hasn’t removed hateful content from textbooks, producing worse content,” by Ben Zion Gad, Jerusalem Post, January 28, 2022:

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has reneged on an agreement with the EU to revise its academic curriculums in 2021 and has instead promoted new academic materials that feature hateful language and violent imagery, a January 2022 report by The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) discovered.

Despite a roadmap created in tandem with the European Union to ensure new textbooks produced in 2021 would be free of hate – an initiative started following the publication of an EU funded study on Palestinian textbooks that discovered rampant antisemitism and violent references – the PA has not removed the troubling content from its textbooks, which are used to educate public school children in PA-administered regions.

“Faced with a clear call by the EU for them to create new textbooks free of hate and antisemitism, the PA simply reprinted the old ones, then produced thousands of pages of new teaching material with content worse than the textbooks themselves,” said IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff. “The EU was apparently unaware of any of this.”

While neglecting their promise to edit the textbooks, the PA produced thousands of pages of new material – much of it directly propagating violence and overt antisemitism. For instance, some materials teach of the “characteristics” of Jews who are devious and treacherous and Israelis, who are described as “Satan’s aide.”

The PA did not revise or replace its textbooks as it had promised it would; instead it reprinted them, unchanged. And then it came up with “thousands of pages of new teaching material” to supplement the textbooks: curricular suggestions as to which subjects should receive greater, and which lesser, attention, guides for leading classroom discussions, templates for tests, and even suggested homework assignments.

The new hateful learning materials span across school subjects. Science classes use illustrations of a boy with a slingshot to illustrate the transfer of energy, while Geography classes remove all mention of Israel.

The “boy with a slingshot” example used to illustrate the transfer of energy (instead of a soccer ball being kicked) is meant to remind students of the use of these weapons against Israeli police and soldiers by rioting Palestinians; it also fits in with the PA’s propaganda that has the Palestinian David bravely defying the Israeli Goliath. Israel is not discussed in Geography class, nor is it shown on any of the maps that are used in the PA’s schools: where the Jewish state should be, there is an empty space.

History classes are particularly controversial, as much focus is spent on recording Jewish control of global events via means of money and power. The Jewish “takeover” of Palestine is also a point of emphasis on the educational materials, as the journey of how “Zionist influence” led to the takeover of Palestine by Jews is among the most broadly covered educational topics….

This narrative of how modern Israel came to be is pure antisemitism, with the tale of a secret cabal of rich and powerful Jews who control much of the world and were supposedly responsible for the Zionist “takeover of Palestine.” There was no “takeover”; the Zionist pioneers arrived, beginning in the late 19th century, buying land from Arab and Turkish landowners. Before 1948, every dunam of land the Jews settled on was paid for.

Apparently these “rich and powerful Jews” were unable to prevent the three major wars that Israel had to fight for its survival – in 1948, 1967, and 1973 – as well as the half-dozen lesser campaigns that it was forced to fight against the terrorists of the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Nor have those “rich and powerful” Jews managed to prevent the United Nations itself from becoming a kangaroo court with Israel perennially in the dock, at both the General Assembly and at the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where Israel has been the object of more resolutions than all the other 192 nations put together. Only Israel is on the permanent agenda (Agenda Item #7) of the UNHRC. And in late December the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted to fund an unprecedented open-ended war crimes probe against Israel by the UNHRC.

Amazing, isn’t it, that those “rich and powerful” Jews appear to have no power whatsoever to protect Israel at the U.N.

The schoolbooks teach children that they have a duty to engage in violent Jihad against the Jews, and that those who die attacking the “infidels” will be rewarded by Allah. Taught thus from an early age, it should be no surprise that so many Palestinians want to engage in terrorist attacks on the hated Zionists. The schoolbook lessons are reinforced by messages on Palestinian television, on childrens’ shows where even tiny tots are shown making stabbing motions with their little knives and in their childish voices lisping their desire to grow up and “kill Jews.”

“It is very clear that the study does reveal the existence of very deeply problematic content that remains of serious concern,” said Maciej Popowski, whose directorate commissioned the study and who oversees all aid to the Palestinian education sector, in September amid the agreement to revise PA curriculums. He added that the EU “will not let off [sic] until we see change happen and we get assurances that no questionable content in books are in use.”…

Mr. Popowski, the EU official in charge of overseeing aid for Palestinian education, needs to be more forceful. It’s not “deeply problematic content” but extreme, murderous antisemitism that is being taught in PA schools– why not call it that? He promises that the EU this time “will not let the P.A. “off [the hook]” but doesn’t specify what the EU will do if these schoolbooks, unrevised, and the even more disturbing “educational materials” that have just been produced to supplement those books, continue to be used.

All Maciej Popowski has to say is “until we see change happen, so that all of the antisemitic and violent content is removed, I will recommend that the EU suspend all aid sent to support the PA”s educational sector.” That is the only threat that will get the attention of the PA leaders, and that might at long last cause them to remove the antisemitic and anti-Israel passages in their textbooks, and to get rid of the ghastly guides and other material it recently produced to supplement those schoolbooks.

Appeals to decency have never worked in the past with the Palestinians; threats to the P.A.’s bank balance just might.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/pa-breaks-its-promise-eu-clean-its-textbooks-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Who is democracy’s threat, Netanyahu or the police? - comment - Herb Keinon

 

by Herb Keinon

As Netanyahu was being accused of undermining the rule of law, those charged with preserving that law were breaking it.

 

OPPOSITION LEADER MK Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a hearing in his ongoing trial at Jerusalem District Court in November. (photo credit: OREN BEN HAKOON/FLASH90)
OPPOSITION LEADER MK Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a hearing in his ongoing trial at Jerusalem District Court in November.
(photo credit: OREN BEN HAKOON/FLASH90)

Only “heaven’s grace” saved Israel’s democracy from former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit was quoted in November as saying in a private conversation.

Mandelblit’s comment, brought to the public’s attention on Channel 12, echoed a sentiment that had by then gained enormous traction: Netanyahu was a threat to democracy.

Anti-Netanyahu protesters marched under this banner week after week outside the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem; bitter personal enemies such as former premiers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert repeated the mantra matter-of-factly from any available microphone; and political rivals such as Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, Gideon Sa’ar and Ze’ev Elkin used that claim to make political capital.

Netanyahu was a danger to democracy; Netanyahu was turning Israel into President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.

And all the while, the police – allegedly without a court order – used NSO Group’s powerful Pegasus spyware to suck out all the phone contents of certain individuals, including at least one central state’s witness in one of the cases against Netanyahu.

An aerial view shows the logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert, southern Israel, July 22, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN) 
An aerial view shows the logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert, southern Israel, July 22, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)

In other words, as Netanyahu was being accused of undermining the rule of law, those charged with preserving that law were breaking it. Law enforcement officers were illegally taking control of various people’s phones. The police were invading people’s privacy without a court order.

Talk about a threat to democracy.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Netanyahu is guilty of the very worst charge against him – bribery via giving regulatory favors worth hundreds of millions of shekels to a communications tycoon in exchange for positive press coverage for him and his family. What is the bigger threat to democracy? What places Israel more squarely on the road to dictatorship: that or the police illicitly gaining access to people’s phone conversations, emails, pictures and contacts – in short, their whole lives?

The truth is that neither was truly a threat to democracy: neither Netanyahu nor the police, because Israeli democracy is strong enough and resilient enough – and has enough necessary checks and balances – to fend off genuine threats. Much of the “threat to democracy” talk is hyperbole. Not everything undemocratic – even if very unseemly – is a mortal threat to democracy itself.

Nevertheless, given the recent Pegasus revelations, one would expect that those for whom preserving Israeli democracy was always their utmost concern when it came to prosecuting Netanyahu would now be at the forefront of the outcry against the police and law enforcement agencies’ abuse of power.

One would expect that those who marched under the banner of “Crime Minister” would now be directing their wrath at the police, or the law enforcement officers, who sanctioned the use of illicit means of surveillance.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the Netanyahu cases, law enforcement officials engaged in some highly questionable tactics, starting with a flood of leaks from the investigations that seemed designed to keep these cases very much in the public eye and create public pressure for an indictment, to the manner in which Netanyahu’s confidants, such as Nir Hefetz, were coerced into turning state’s witness. Hefetz documented those tactics – including emotional and even physical abuse – in court.

But these sharp and uncomfortable corners were rounded because the ends – getting to Netanyahu, that Erdogan-like threat to Israeli democracy – justified the means, even if those means were themselves antidemocratic.

That doesn’t mean Netanyahu is blameless. The verdict is still out, literally, on whether he abused his power by taking gifts amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars and whether he did indeed grant regulatory favors in exchange for positive coverage.

Not in question, however, is that once the indictments against him were filed, he did what he could to undermine the public’s confidence in the police, the state attorney, the attorney-general and ultimately the court itself.

Ironically, the Pegasus revelations have now given the public due cause to lack faith in these institutions that Netanyahu tried to instill. These institutions now need to engage in genuine stock-taking. A government commission of inquiry would be a good place to start.

Law enforcement officials, according to Sunday’s headlines, are now expected to argue that information they illicitly obtained through the use of the spyware did not help them build their cases against Netanyahu or was not actually necessary in building those cases.

But is anybody expected to believe that, especially since the same law enforcement agencies said just a couple of weeks ago they did not use Pegasus without the proper authorization when it now emerges that they did just that in one of the most sensitive cases in the country’s history?

Mandelblit, in that private conversation four months ago, spoke of “heaven’s grace” sparing Israeli democracy from Netanyahu. He might have been right in invoking heaven’s name, but what he should have done from the outset of this saga is instill in the law enforcement officials the fear of heaven when investigating a sitting prime minister.

Go ahead and investigate, but make absolutely sure that there is fail-safe supervision and that everything is done with utmost transparency and is completely aboveboard. Being that these investigations could bring down a democratically elected leader, approach that with fear and trembling.

 In the present case, the prime minister was brought down, but the needed vigilance and care were not employed. The end result is now the mess the country finds itself in.

A not insignificant part of this country feels that the legal system unfairly targeted Netanyahu, and now the recently revealed police surveillance tactics have given them a firm leg to stand on.

Those who say that it doesn’t matter how the evidence against Netanyahu was gathered, since his actions were “a threat to democracy,” will now have to explain how the illicit actions of the law enforcement agencies are not – if left unchecked – even a greater threat. 

 

Herb Keinon

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-695689

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The Big Lie of Woke Capitalism - S.R. Piccoli

 

by S.R. Piccoli

Corporations have gone political and seek, or at least profess to seek, change in the world.

There are at least three terms to describe the concept of stakeholder capitalism -- corporate wokeness, woke corporatism, and woke capitalism. The last of the three was coined in 2015 by Ross Douthat when writing a piece for the New York Times. He defined it as how companies signal their support for progressive causes in order to maintain their influence in society. Since then the concept has become very popular in the U.S. and worldwide, corporations have gone political and seek, or at least profess to seek, change in the world.

On January 24, for one thing, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman wrote in a piece for the Financial Times that “Today, staff and customers believe you should... speak out on big, touchstone issues, from race to fake news and climate change.” In a historic moment of multiple and converging global challenges, he thinks, we have no other option but to embrace so-called stakeholder capitalism. After all, evidence is stacking up to show the “financial benefits to companies that consistently apply their principles and actively work to solve societal problems,” he argues. “Not everyone agrees, however,” he sadly but honestly acknowledges. In fact, if there is a big support for stakeholder capitalism among corporations, there’s also been a backlash from conservative voices, as we will see below. But let us dwell a little more on the supporters of stakeholder capitalism.

In his annual letter to BlackRock shareholders a few days ago, CEO Larry Fink argued that expectations of business leaders have changed dramatically in the last few years. Increased profits, happy shareholders and more jobs are no longer what a chief executive is expected to deliver. For instance, most stakeholders -- from shareholders, to employees, to customers, to communities, and regulators -- “now expect companies to play a role in decarbonizing the global economy.” And “few things will impact capital allocation decisions -- and thereby the long-term value of your company -- more than how effectively you navigate the global energy transition in the years ahead.” This illustrates perfectly what stakeholder capitalism -- the new mantra of the Business Round Table as announced in August 2019 and endorsed by almost 200 CEOs of the largest corporations -- is all about. In Klaus Schwab’s words,

That is the core of stakeholder capitalism: it is a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.

Stakeholder capitalism supporters sometimes love to insist that their credo is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda, they assure, much less it is “woke.” “It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper. This is the power of capitalism.” As Fink himself wrote in his letter, “We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients.” Stakeholder capitalism, he said, “is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke’.” At this point, one might wonder why, then, is BlackRock launching a Center for Stakeholder Capitalism -- one that brings together “leading CEOs, investors, policy experts, and academics to share their experience and deliver their insights” -- and not simply a Center for Capitalism? There seems to be a contradiction here. Or, talking about down-to-earth things, one “might question whether most people really care whether the management of Tesco supports taking the knee,” as Rupert Darwall puts it in response to Paul Polman’s piece. “More importantly, does it matter if they don’t? Or are customers actually more bothered that their weekly shop remains affordable during a time of spiralling inflation?”

But that’s nothing compared to the avalanche of criticism on the stakeholder theory and the deluge of objections that have been raised against it. Take Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, a book that decries America’s turn to stakeholder capitalism. A biotech entrepreneur, the author lifts the lid on the “dirty little secret” behind corporations supporting social causes such as the Black Lives Matter movement and takes the reader behind the scenes into corporate boardrooms and five-star conferences, into Ivy League classrooms and secretive nonprofits, to reveal “the defining scam of our century.” He explains how U.S. companies are exploiting “woke” values and pretending to care about social justice in order to boost profits and gain more power at the expense of the American people. He accuses big companies such as Coca-Cola of capitalizing on the outrage over George Floyd’s death after employing and promoting progressive values in the workplace.  

American capitalism has become a “con,” says the author. The con works like a magic trick, which generally consists of three parts, as Ramaswamy explains in an article he wrote for the New York Post:

First, the Pledge: You find an ordinary market where ordinary people sell ordinary things. The simpler, the better. Second, the Turn: You find an arbitrage in that market and squeeze the hell out of it. An arbitrage refers to the opportunity to buy something for one price and instantly sell it for a higher price to someone else. That much is well known. But here’s the dirty little secret underlying the third step of corporate America’s act, its Prestige. Here’s how it works: Pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each.

And so it was that Wokeness remade American capitalism in its own image. “The modern woke-industrial complex divides us as a people,” the book’s description says. “By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when we as Americans lack both.”

Meanwhile in Britain, at the end of January the Adam Smith Institute published a new paper, “Capitalism After Covid,” that says companies should ditch woke capitalism or risk derailing the UK’s post-pandemic recovery: “Companies should stick to traditional profit-driven shareholder capitalism rather than pursuing ‘woke capitalist’ social objectives that often require political action and leave firms facing accusations of hypocrisy.” The think-tank’s statement comes as City investment titan Terry Smith lashed out at consumer goods giant Unilever for being “obsessed” with its sustainability credentials. 

How do we come out of the con? The way to counter all of this is not to fight back directly, Ramaswamy writes. To do so is a “losing battle” and “you’ll be canceled before you even stand a chance.”

The true solution is “to gradually rebuild a vision for shared American identity that is so deep and so powerful that it dilutes wokeism to irrelevance. One that no longer leaves us susceptible to being divided by corporate elites for their own gain.” This looks like a good path to follow.

Image: Center Street Publishing

 

Samuel Robert Piccoli is a blogger and the author of the books Being Conservative from A to Z (2014) and Blessed Are the Free in Spirit (2021). He is Italian and lives in the Venice area.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_big_lie_of_woke_capitalism_.html

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Toxic generosity - Douglas Altabef

 

by Douglas Altabef

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan 

How Europeans use Israeli NGOs to destabilize Israel.

The just-released report by Im Tirtzu that funding by European governments and entities supported by them to anti-Zionist Israeli NGOs has exceeded half a billion shekels over the past decade is eye-popping.

Not just because the amount is breathtaking, in both absolute terms and in the relative universe of Israeli NGO funding, but also because of the message of contempt that the funding represents.

Let’s be very clear about what is going on here. European governments and governmental entities have decided to bypass normal diplomatic channels, opting instead to influence not just Israeli policy, but the state of affairs of Israeli existence through the vehicle of empowering anti-Zionist Israeli organizations.

It is not an overstatement to analogize what the Europeans are doing as being akin to Iran’s arming of Houthi rebels in Yemen, seeking to overthrow the government.

How cynical, how contemptuous are the Europeans! They have implicitly denigrated and delegitimized Israel as a sovereign state by turning to home-grown organizations whose agendas comport with those of their funders.

The Israeli equivalents of Lenin’s “useful idiots” are carrying the ideological bags of their patrons in seeking not just to impact policy in Judea and Samaria, but to impugn Israel’s standing in the community of nations and even to radically affect the status of Israel as a functioning Jewish state.

For the Europeans, this is heady stuff. They get to hide behind their agents, maintaining deniability for Israeli NGO actions, all the while assuring that, with their funding, those actions can occur.

Thus, when B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence appear at international forums or the European Parliament to demonize Israel with charges of its being an apartheid state committing war crimes and crimes against humanity—all in the service of a colonialist regime—their flight tickets and hotel rooms, so to speak, have been covered by European governments.

When HaMoked floods the Supreme Court with petitions to stop deterrence-producing demolitions of terrorists’ houses, or when Adalah petitions to revoke the Law of Return, and lobbies for terminating Israel as a Jewish state, their attorneys and public-relations people are all being indirectly paid by their European government sugar daddies.

It is important to note that most of these organizations have a tiny popular following within Israel, and their voices would never be heard, and their influence felt, but for the largesse of European governments and far-left foreign patrons, such as the New Israel Fund.

Given that this relationship is well known, that is not explosive news, but the real question is why it is tolerated.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel suffers from and needs to shake off its “galut syndrome” in order to restore domestic deterrence and respect for the law.

Galut (“exile”) syndrome is the need for approval and permission from those who will never provide it. It is the internalization of the narratives and mindsets of others who say that we are never worthy enough, or worse, need to be held to a higher standard than the rest of the world.

This self-destructive, self-preening sanctimony must stop. Israel needs to understand, with great clarity, that it is a sovereign state, not a textbook case for fashioning the perfect one.

The wisdom that democracy is not a suicide pact must be recalled, internalized and put into practice.

Several years ago, the Knesset passed legislation requiring organizations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments to report annually as to this state of affairs.

Now is the time to go further. Organizations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments, or entities related to them, should lose their tax-exempt status in Israel.

Of course, Israel respects free speech. However, there is absolutely no requirement that its government should, in effect, subsidize with taxpayer funds any speech that is designed to delegitimize the state. We are being self-destructive in the name of being an open and moral society.

Israel should also consider replicating the situation in the United States, where foreign government-funded organizations are required to register as foreign agents.

Finally, there should also be a closer connection between anti-BDS legislation and the delegitimizing efforts of these organizations, since their goals are very much the same.

We make a grave mistake thinking that, as a society, we are immune from the toxicity of that which European governments and their stooges here are seeking to accomplish.

Israel might be a strong country based on certain criteria, but we remain the “Jew among the nations,” and as such are vulnerable to demonization on a scale that is unique in the world.

We need to see the agenda of European cynicism for what it is, and not be complicit in our own delegitimization.

 

Douglas Altabef is chairman of the board of Im Tirtzu and a director of the Israel Independence Fund. He can be reached at dougaltabef@gmail.com.

 

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/toxic-generosity/

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Sunday, February 6, 2022

Mischief on Life Support Machine - Amir Taheri

 

by Amir Taheri

[C]ertain elements in Iran and in the so-called "international community" need to keep this pot boiling for ideological reasons.

  • Seen from China and Russia, the nuclear issue is an effective means of preventing Iran from returning to its historic pro-West path. An isolated Iran has helped Russia to capture a good chunk of its oil market while preventing it from using its immense resources of natural gas, probably the largest in the world, to help Europe shake its dependence on Russia.

  • Both Russia and China have been careful to show Iran its place, as low as possible by normal standards. China has excluded Iran from its grandiose "One Belt-One World" project while Russia, as seen in the recent humiliation that Russian President Vladimir Putin inflicted on Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow, has shown that it treats the regime in Tehran as a vassal and not an equal partner.

  • Obama went further than any of his predecessors to help the mullahs live another day. He invented a "fatwa", presumably by "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei to declare building and using a nuclear arsenal is "forbidden" (haram) in Islamic shariah, forgetting that Pakistan, an Islamic republic with a population twice that of Iran, has been a nuclear-armed nation for decades. Unable to pass his scheme through the US Congress, Obama also invented the P5+1 scheme that keeps issues related to Iran out of the normal framework of international law. To emphasize his keenness on helping the mullahs at a crucial time, he even arranged for $1.7 billion to be smuggled to Tehran in cash via Cyprus, straight into the hands of Gen. Qassem Soleimani's Quds Force.

Seen from China and Russia, the nuclear issue is an effective means of preventing Iran from returning to its historic pro-West path. Russia, as seen in the recent humiliation that Russian President Vladimir Putin inflicted on Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow, has shown that it treats the regime in Tehran as a vassal and not an equal partner. Pictured: Putin speaks with Raisi in Moscow on January 19, 2022. (Photo by Pavel Bednyakov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Ever since the roadshow known as "nuclear talks with Iran" started almost 15 years ago, we have witnessed an event unique in diplomatic annals. On the surface the whole process is designed to deal with something simple: Iran should comply with the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it was one of the founders. In exchange the "international community" would recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium, a right that is already granted under NPT and does not need further endorsement by "the international community".

And, yet, the rigmarole has produced seven unanimously passed resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and over 1,500 sanctions imposed on Iran.

Why is that?

One answer is that certain elements in Iran and in the so-called "international community" need to keep this pot boiling for ideological reasons. Seen from the West, Iran is a black sheep in the region.

Seen from China and Russia, the nuclear issue is an effective means of preventing Iran from returning to its historic pro-West path. An isolated Iran has helped Russia to capture a good chunk of its oil market while preventing it from using its immense resources of natural gas, probably the largest in the world, to help Europe shake its dependence on Russia. For its part, China has benefited from the Iran's isolation by dominating the Iranian market and securing oil supplies at juicy discounts.

Both Russia and China have been careful to show Iran its place, as low as possible by normal standards. China has excluded Iran from its grandiose "One Belt-One World" project while Russia, as seen in the recent humiliation that Russian President Vladimir Putin inflicted on Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow, has shown that it treats the regime in Tehran as a vassal and not an equal partner.

Thus both the Western powers and China and Russia have been using the "nuclear talks" as a diversion from the real issues that the world has had with the Islamic Republic since its inception 43 years ago.

All this does not mean that either China or Russia is happy about the mullahs' systemic mischief-making. But both act on the assumption that if Iran goes beyond certain limits, they would be dealt with by the US or, more remotely, by Israel.

The current set of talks, being held in Vienna, seem set to lead to yet another shadow solution that avoids the core issues with Iran. Latest leaks and speculations suggest that the 5+1 powers that pretend to represent "the international community" intend to throw a life-buoy to the mullahs who are in sinking mode.

This comes in the form of a gradual de-freezing of Iran's assets abroad. The figure suggested is $700 million a month for a year, the same as negotiated by the Obama administration with Iran's former President Hassan Rouhani but cancelled by US President Donald Trump. That would help Raisi cover Iran's budget deficit for the next Iranian new year starting on March 21. If the scheme is renewed for a further year, Tehran may be able to spend a chunk of it buying the much-coveted fighter-bombers from Moscow.

As things stand, it is unlikely that Britain, Germany and France will reap any immediate economic benefits from the deal. They might, however, get some of their hostages released from jails in Iran. And that could offer UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in difficulty for other reasons, some respite from charges of incompetence and lack of compassion. French President Emmanuel Macron, facing re-election in a few weeks' time would also benefit from appearing on TV hugging long-suffering hostages coming home.

President Joe Biden, heir to Obama's "greatest diplomatic legacy" will also get something.

First he would undo what Trump, a hate figure for Obamaists, did. Next, he would claim his slogans "diplomacy is back" and "multilateralism is back". More importantly, from an image angle, he would get more American hostages released by Iran than Trump did with his "maximum pressure" policy, while claiming that the cash released to the mullahs was not a ransom but a humanitarian investment.

Déjà vu again? Yes, in the past four decades, we have been there many times. President Jimmy Carter tried it with the Algiers Accord he signed with the mullahs. President Ronald Reagan continued the same policy by smuggling arms to Iran. President George W. H. Bush offered his "goodwill breeds goodwill" olive branch, lifting many sanctions and helping the mullahs live another day. President Bill Clinton apologized to the mullahs for "the wrong that my civilization has made" to Islam. He lifted many of the sanctions imposed by his predecessors and even claimed that he found the political system imposed on Iran by the mullahs to be "closer to my democratic conventions".

President George W. Bush listed Iran as part of the" Axis of Evil" with Iraq and North Korea. But then he invited them as equal partners in shaping the future of Afghanistan, which meant, inter alia, accepting the mullahs' demand that monarchy not be restored and that the new Afghan regime be designated an Islamic Republic. His Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, spoke of "our working relationship" with Iran in reshaping "liberated" Iraq, which meant installing Tehran's lackeys, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki as prime minister.

Obama went further than any of his predecessors to help the mullahs live another day. He invented a "fatwa", presumably by "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei to declare building and using a nuclear arsenal is "forbidden" (haram) in Islamic shariah, forgetting that Pakistan, an Islamic republic with a population twice that of Iran, has been a nuclear-armed nation for decades. Unable to pass his scheme through the US Congress, Obama also invented the P5+1 scheme that keeps issues related to Iran out of the normal framework of international law. To emphasize his keenness on helping the mullahs at a crucial time, he even arranged for $1.7 billion to be smuggled to Tehran in cash via Cyprus, straight into the hands of Gen. Qassem Soleimani's Quds Force.

Yes, we have been there, seen that and bought the T-shirt. Iran has managed to survive on the life-support machine granted it by the big powers for different reasons. But, even under life-support, it has continued to do the mischief it deems its raison d'être.

This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat

 

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18205/iran-mischief-life-support

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Iran ‘society set to explode’ while Biden unfreezes $29 billion for regime - Benjamin Weinthal

 

by Benjamin Weinthal

Social discontent in Iran has risen by 300 percent in the past year according to an IRGC document obtained from Edalat-e Ali.

A hacktivist organization has revealed a highly sensitive Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps document that asserts Iranian “society is in a state of explosion” because of the crippling sanctions imposed on the nation due to its illicit nuclear program.

The US government news organization Radio Farda obtained the document from Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice), the whistleblower entity that has also secured confidential documents and video footage about the torture of Iranian prisoners, wrote Farda.

According to Radio Farda’s Golnaz Esfandiari, who authored the exclusive article, “the document covers a meeting with IRGC’s intelligence wing and quotes an official named “Mohammadi” saying that Iran’s “society is in a state of explosion.”

Mohammadi added that “social discontent has risen by 300% in the past year.”

Radio Farda said it could not verify the authenticity of the document beyond the sourcing of Ali’s Justice.

Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami smiles during a joint exercise called the 'Great Prophet 17' in the southwest of Iran (credit: SAEED SAJJADI/FARS NEWS/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)VIA REUTERS) Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami smiles during a joint exercise called the 'Great Prophet 17' in the southwest of Iran (credit: SAEED SAJJADI/FARS NEWS/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)VIA REUTERS)

The official noted that “several shocks” in recent months have “shaken public trust” in the regime of President Ebrahim Raisi, who is listed as a US-sanctioned person for his role in several mass murders, including the massacre of at least 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988.

Radio Farda reported that “Mohammadi referred to soaring inflation, including hikes in the price of food items, energy, and cars. He also noted the sharp declines in stock prices.”

“The leaked document includes notes from a November 2021 task-force meeting chaired by Brig.-Gen. Hossein Nejat, a senior IRGC commander and deputy head of Sarallah, a key IRGC base that oversees security in Tehran,” the station said.

Omri Ceren, the national security adviser for US Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, tweeted on Saturday: “The Biden administration is giving Iran a nuclear weapons arsenal,” with a link to a Daily Mail article that declares: “Biden REMOVES some Iran sanctions imposed by Trump, including unfreezing $29 billion in bank accounts overseas,  in bid to return to Obama-era deal that three negotiators have resigned over.”

In addition to officials at the meeting from the IRGC, a US-classified terrorist organization the IRGC document noted that the meeting of the Working Group On the Prevention Of A Livelihood-Based Security Crisis was attended by the Basij militia, intelligence bodies, and the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office.

The Basij militia is a volunteer force frequently used to crush demonstrations against political and economic corruption of the theocratic state.

The Jerusalem Post reported last month that Iran’s deputy interior minister, Taghi Rostamvandi, outlined factors during a speech that could shake the foundations of the theocratic state.

The Islamic Republic News Agency, the regime-controlled news agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reported that Rostamvandi warned that Iranians are seeking with greater frequency “fundamental changes in the country,” and a secular government and way of life.

Revolts against the clerical state have erupted in Iranian society since the 1979 Islamic revolution, including the widespread Green movement protests in 2009 and massive unrest in 2019.

 

Benjamin Weinthal

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-695612

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Losing Taiwan is not an option - James Poplar

 

by James Poplar

We’re facing something of a Hobson’s choice right now but timely, focused, committed action can change the current dynamic.

One of the mementos from my former life as a naval officer is a paperweight that I display proudly on my desk marked “Naval Support Activity Republic of China” with an outline of Taiwan in the background. It’s a subtle reminder that, within my lifetime, Taiwan was once viewed as the Republic of China and that the United States had a special relationship with this bulwark of democracy in the far east.

In retrospect, the United States was extremely naïve in assuming that, if we allowed Communist China into the community of nations, we could remake that repressive regime in our own image. It is no secret that the People's Republic of China (PRC), through both economic and military power, has a strategic goal of achieving world hegemony. Yet despite this, American corporations continue to kowtow to the Chinese communists while at the same time the PRC steals our intellectual property, technology, and military secrets as we sit idly by and watch the decline of our own nation.

Unfortunately, by the stroke of a pen, the 1979 U.S.-P.R.C. Joint Communique switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. In the Joint Communique, the United States recognized the Government of the PRC as “the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.” The Joint Communique also stated that the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan. However, we are committed to assisting Taiwan in maintaining its defensive capability.

With that in mind, deterrence of Chinese aggression against Taiwan must be a stated goal and a commitment of any responsible administration. To simply look the other way and pretend it is not happening is negligent. History has proven time and time again that any attempt to placate or appease an international bully only emboldens them. As one of my older in-laws would say “you cannot change a tiger’s stripes.” Understanding this, what can we do as a nation to defend our former ally’s sovereignty?

Admiral Philip Davidson, in his outgoing congressional testimony as head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command last spring, estimated that “China would invade Taiwan in six years.” China hands now refer to this somber prediction as the “Davidson Window” and urge us to act now before it is too late.

Image: The Taiwan Strait. Public domain.

Whatever we as a nation are going to do to deter Chinese aggression must begin now; it must be strategic; and it must be applied at a steady strain regardless of the inevitable setbacks as world events change the geopolitical landscape (e.g., what we are now witnessing in Ukraine). Chinese leaders have not attempted to forcibly occupy Taiwan up until this point simply because they are not confident that the costs that they will incur both during and after an invasion outweigh the potential gain.

Our national leadership, through continued naval presence and robust military assistance, must ensure that the PRC unmistakably reaches this same conclusion time and time again. Once the PRC senses a real or even perceived weakness or a lack of resolve on the part of the United States the game is over.

First, to accomplish this, we need leverage. The United States must initiate and lead a broad coalition of nations to credibly convince the Chinese that crossing the Taiwan Straits would be too costly for them to launch a full-scale invasion.

Second, the United States must prepare Taiwan to withstand and then prevail in a Chinese-initiated missile attack. Taiwan’s defenses must be able to withstand the damage from a first strike and be able to respond in kind. In addition, U.S. bases and facilities in the Pacific such as Guam and Hawaii must be hardened to withstand the inevitable retaliatory strike.

Third, the United States must stress to the PRC our resolve and nuclear deterrence capability so that there can be no doubt of a Chinese misunderstanding. The use of tactical nuclear weapons against U.S. forces would result in an outcome not favorable to the PRC—the risk would not be worth the potential gain.

History time and time again has shown that initiating armed conflict results in a tragic outcome. We can hope the PRC has taken that lesson aboard but it is not worth the risk.

In the end, I suspect we will look the other way and express “grave concern” while the PRC takes over Taiwan and goes on to dominate the Pacific rim and eventually surpass the United States. Meanwhile, our myopic national leadership will remain focused on domestic issues “threatening our democracy.”

No matter how you slice it, the defense of Taiwan is the ultimate Hobson’s Choice – damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But in the end, he who hesitates is lost.

 

James Poplar

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/losing_taiwan_is_not_an_option.html

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