Israel Politics & Geo-Political Analysis

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016

American Uprising

This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.

They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.

The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The impossible states fell one by one. Ohio. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Iowa. The white working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.

They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against a system in which they could go to jail for a trifle while the elites could violate the law and still stroll through a presidential election. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.

They fought and they won.

This wasn’t a vote. It was an uprising. Like the ordinary men chipping away at the Berlin Wall, they tore down an unnatural thing that had towered over them. And as they watched it fall, they marveled at how weak and fragile it had always been. And how much stronger they were than they had ever known.

Who were these people? They were leftovers and flyover country. They didn’t have bachelor degrees and had never set foot in a Starbucks. They were the white working class. They didn’t talk right or think right. They had the wrong ideas, the wrong clothes and the ridiculous idea that they still mattered.

They were wrong about everything. Illegal immigration? Everyone knew it was here to stay. Black Lives Matter? The new civil rights movement. Manufacturing? As dead as the dodo. Banning Muslims? What kind of bigot even thinks that way? Love wins. Marriage loses. The future belongs to the urban metrosexual and his dot com, not the guy who used to have a good job before it went to China or Mexico.

They couldn’t change anything. A thousand politicians and pundits had talked of getting them to adapt to the inevitable future. Instead they got in their pickup trucks and drove out to vote.

And they changed everything.

Barack Hussein Obama boasted that he had changed America. A billion regulations, a million immigrants, a hundred thousand lies and it was no longer your America. It was his.

He was JFK and FDR rolled into one. He told us that his version of history was right and inevitable.

And they voted and left him in the dust. They walked past him and they didn’t listen. He had come to campaign to where they still cling to their guns and their bibles. He came to plead for his legacy.

And America said, “No.”

Fifty millions Americans repudiated him. They repudiated the Obamas and the Clintons. They ignored the celebrities. They paid no attention to the media. They voted because they believed in the impossible. And their dedication made the impossible happen.

Americans were told that walls couldn’t be built and factories couldn’t be opened. That treaties couldn’t be unsigned and wars couldn’t be won. It was impossible to ban Muslim terrorists from coming to America or to deport the illegal aliens turning towns and cities into gangland territories.

It was all impossible. And fifty million Americans did the impossible. They turned the world upside down.

It’s midnight in America. CNN is weeping. MSNBC is wailing. ABC calls it a tantrum. NBC damns it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The same machine that crushed the American people for two straight terms, the mass of government, corporations and non-profits that ran the country, was set to win.

Instead the people stood in front of the machine. They blocked it with their bodies. They went to vote even though the polls told them it was useless. They mailed in their absentee ballots even while Hillary Clinton was planning her fireworks victory celebration. They looked at the empty factories and barren farms. They drove through the early cold. They waited in line. They came home to their children to tell them that they had done their best for their future. They bet on America. And they won.

They won improbably. And they won amazingly.

They were tired of ObamaCare. They were tired of unemployment. They were tired of being lied to. They were tired of watching their sons come back in coffins to protect some Muslim country. They were tired of being called racists and homophobes. They were tired of seeing their America disappear.

And they stood up and fought back. This was their last hope. Their last chance to be heard.

Watch this video. See ten ways John Oliver destroyed Donald Trump. Here’s three ways Samantha Bee broke the internet by taunting Trump supporters. These three minutes of Stephen Colbert talking about how stupid Trump is owns the internet. Watch Madonna curse out Trump supporters. Watch Katy Perry. Watch Miley Cyrus. Watch Robert Downey Jr. Watch Beyonce campaign with Hillary. Watch. Click.

Watch fifty million Americans take back their country.

The media had the election wrong all along. This wasn’t about personalities. It was about the impersonal. It was about fifty million people whose names no one except a server will ever know fighting back. It was about the homeless woman guarding Trump’s star. It was about the lost Democrats searching for someone to represent them in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was about the union men who nodded along when the organizers told them how to vote, but who refused to sell out their futures.

No one will ever interview all those men and women. We will never see all their faces. But they are us and we are them. They came to the aid of a nation in peril. They did what real Americans have always done. They did the impossible.

America is a nation of impossibilities. We exist because our forefathers did not take no for an answer. Not from kings or tyrants. Not from the elites who told them that it couldn’t be done.

The day when we stop being able to pull of the impossible is the day that America will cease to exist.

Today is not that day. Today fifty million Americans did the impossible.

Midnight has passed. A new day has come. And everything is about to change.

November 6, 2016November 6, 2016

How the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari Cashed in on the Political Capital of Global Jihad

Some of Nigeria’s analysts see Muhammadu Buhari’s emergence as the “accepted” “saintly tough-guy” Nigerian corruption killer in a different light from the general make-believe one. These analysts attribute Buhari’s final success after many failed attempts to become Nigeria’s democratically-elected president to some external influences. They claim that some powerful international figures have often meddled in Nigeria’s internal affairs to affect the outcome of events in the country. And Buhari’s recent victory at the polls was not an exception.

One remarkable example that these critics cite is the especially patronizing speech by the American President Barack Obama just before the 2015 Nigerian presidential election which brought Buhari to power. In his speech Obama urged Nigerians to maintain a united country no matter the outcome of the election. Many saw the speech in which the president used an old Biafran-Nigerian wartime “genocidal slogan:” “To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done” as an outward expression of clandestine political machinations which in the end installed a preferred candidate in Nigeria’s supreme leadership saddle.

In the opinion of many observers, Buhari is an Islamic extremist who believes that he; “will continue to show openly and inside me [him] the total commitment to the sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria,” and “God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the sharia in the country.” Those are Buhari’s own words. For having the foisted posture of the “saintly tough-ruler” as well as an Islamic fundamentalist, Buhari fitted well the ideal consensus candidate of Nigeria’s Islamic north. He was chosen because he was believed to be a capable and willing candidate who would boldly implement the so-called north’s long term ambitious Islamic agenda for Nigeria – extending the global Islamic caliphate project to cover the entire country, including Christians’ and other religions’ areas. Nigeria for many reasons has long been considered important in this local and global Islamic caliphate agenda. It is said that the ultimate goal of this agenda for countries in Africa’s south of the Sahara is to eventually overrun and conquer them for Islam like those in the northern half of the continent. The advocates and financial sponsors of this agenda see the conquer and subjugation of the entire Nigerian geography as being strategic because by virtue of its position and clout the country will serve as a launch pad whose reaches cover the entire target-region.

The Nigerian jihad as part of the greater global Islamic agenda

In Nigeria today there are two manifest champions of this “global caliphate” agenda. They are members of the deadly Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram who have very strong connections with the most powerful people in Nigerian political, military and business establishments. The second group is also an equally well-connected Islamic terrorist group modeled after the fearsome Sudanese Janjaweed. Its members are mostly Fulani, members of the ethnic group (the group sometimes referred to as Nigeria’s “born-to-rule” over others) from which the current Nigerian president comes. They are generally known as the Fulani Cattle Herders (FCH.) Like Boko Haram, Fulani Cattle Herders are also generously financed by the northern elite and ruling oligarch class.

In the last few decades Saudi Arabia and some other Islamic countries like Iran, Turkey and Nigeria have dreamed of and fanatically pursued the archaic fantasy of an eventual Islam-subjugated world. These countries have expended in the process, a chunk of their petrodollar and other national incomes in pursuing the agenda. Some observers think that they have been successful in more ways than most people will care to admit. It is believed that among other achievements, that perhaps their greatest is being able to successfully infiltrate the Western news media establishment. Through this subversive penetration of the mainstream news and information dissemination process of Western societies, the jihadists have over the years, exerted pervasive subtle but unmistakable influence on the editorial opinions of media outlets in the West. Some analysts think that the prevalent editorial stance of most mainstream Western media where each tries to outdo the other on who would best be described as the most “politically correct,” “tolerant” and “civilized liberal,” can hardly be explained otherwise.

The infiltration seems to be so thorough and complete that today no matter how realistic and objective a critic is, there will always be a way to accuse him or her of being “politically incorrect,” suffering from “islamophobia” and expressing a “dangerous far right extremist views.” Today anyone can easily bet their most valued possessions to predict that the editorial opinions of Western media will always sing in unison the well-rehearsed chorus that “not all Muslims are terrorists” therefore the critic who deviates from the accepted “liberal” and fear-induced “civilized tolerance” is condemned and labeled; “unsophisticated,” “bigoted,” “crude” and “uninformed racist.” The new Western standard is simple; even after the attacker had called the authorities on the phone to announce their reason for the attack, Western authorities in the name of “not being at war with Islam,” should spend an endless period of time investigating to ascertain the motive behind the attack.

The ultimate goals of all terroristic or Islamic jihad campaigns are to receive attention, elicit fear and intimidate or cow the target-victims (the infidels.) Those goals have substantially been achieved in many places around the world, Nigeria inclusive. The ongoing global jihad has not only successfully used fear and intimidation to cow much of the international community, it has also compelled everybody to “tolerate and endure happily” the prevailing globe-wide displays of barbaric Islamic violent extremism. So, the fear campaigns have successfully cleared the way for the emergence into powerful offices, such extremist bigots like Buhari in dysfunctional societies like the Nigerian country. As a result, people in the mold of Nigeria’s present leader, rather than being censored are patronized by such world leaders like United Nations’ Ban Ki-moon with such unrealistic words like: “You are highly respected by world leaders, including myself. Your persona has given your country a positive image.” Yet the so-called Nigeria’s “positive image” is nothing more than the continued descent to the lowest levels of religious intolerance and flagrant abuses of the human rights of peaceful citizens. The brutal killings of hundreds of non-violent Biafran separatist protesters by government security forces are too recent to be swept under the carpet by the patrons of these extremist elements.

While campaigning for and on assumption of office, Buhari did not need to present any complex political agenda. Having proved himself as an Islamic fundamentalist, he could cash in on the well-established global jihad’s political capital of the “global caliphate.” Nevertheless, Buhari who became the posterchild of Nigeria’s “saint-and-tough-guy” messiah, winning became a do-or-die obsession. At 70 plus years, he became desperate as he felt that time was running out on him. In his own words; “baboons and dogs would be soaked in blood” should he fail again to win the election to become Nigeria’s next president in 2015.

Buhari and his handlers managed to convince the uninformed public that he was the “poor” candidate who never stole money since his more than forty years in public office (but there are abundant public records to the contrary) who is suited to kill the monster of Nigerian corruption. Yet this wretched candidate was able to easily afford the $10 million consultancy fee of the American political strategist David Axelrod of the Obama phenomenon. So, an indigent Buhari who would kill the Nigerian corruption saw nothing wrong in paying a “modest” $10 million to a foreign political consulting firm for a local election in a country where the people live on less than $2 a day.

November 6, 2016

Trump’s True Opponent

As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.

One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning.

The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.

After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.

Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.

The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.

If Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges the winner, America will embark on a different course.

But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.

More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.

Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.

His prolific record of trash talking make the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him by multiple women in recent weeks ring true. So too, his willingness to truck in racially charged rhetoric, like his accusation that the Mexican government is sending its rapists and violent criminals across the border for Americans to deal with, has made him toxic for millions of American voters.

But for his supporters, who Trump is, is less important than what he represents.

What he represents is the voters’ rebellion against the American establishment – not just the political establishment, but the full spectrum of the American elite. From Washington to Wall Street, from college campuses to the media, tens of millions of Americans believe that their establishment is rotten to the core. And they support Trump because he is running against the establishment.

Popular resentment and animosity towards the powers that be was enough to win Trump the Republican nomination. And as he closes the gap with Clinton in the lead up to Tuesday, chances are rising that it will be enough to get him into the White House as well.

How did we get to this point?

Trump’s rise has been in the making for a decade.

During the Bush administration, many Republicans quietly fretted that George W. Bush and his advisers didn’t know what they were doing in Iraq. They were angered even more by Bush’s bank bailout in 2008 and his massive increase of the national debt.

But as angry as they were at Bush, Republican anger at their leaders has grown exponentially during Obama’s tenure in office.

Since Obama entered office he has used the powers of his office to seize powers no president had ever dared to claim. And Republicans – who bore the brunt of the damage his policies caused – expected their presidential nominees and congressional representatives to protect them. They expected them to curb Obama’s perceived abuses at the IRS, the EPA, at the border with Mexico, the Justice Department, in the healthcare industry, the military, the State Department and beyond.

In both the 2008 and 2012 elections, millions of Republican voters were appalled by their successive nominees’ refusal to go on the offensive against Obama. In 2008, Sen. John McCain refused to mention Obama’s deep and longstanding ties with radical political and social forces, including his decades’ long relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who regularly preached hatred for America from his pulpit.

In 2012, Mitt Romney simply choked. He couldn’t make a competent case against Obama or withstand media criticism, that as the Republican nominee he should have expected.

Republican voters walked away from their party’s defeat with the sense that their candidates cared more about what media said about them than they cared about winning.

Republican voters took an even dimmer view of their congressional leadership. In both the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections, Republicans won big in both houses of Congress. The voters’ clear wish was for their lawmakers to check Obama. But instead, the Republican leadership lashed out at their own voters while failing time after time to check Obama’s perceived abuse of power.

Case in point of course was the Republican Senate leadership’s failure to view Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as a treaty, despite the fact that it clearly met the standard to be so viewed. By going along with Obama’s lie that the nuclear deal, which destroyed 70 years of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in one fell swoop, was a mere presidential agreement, the Senate leaders enabled Obama to implement his radical deal with little difficulty.

Trump was elected to be the Republican presidential nominee because Trump is the opposite of McCain, Romney and their counterparts in the GOP’s congressional leadership ranks. Trump isn’t merely running against Democrats and the liberal establishment. He is running against the Republican establishment as well. And his supporters love him for it.

Trump began building his anti-establishment credentials as soon as he announced his candidacy. At the first Republican primary debate in August 2015, he effectively declared war against the Republican establishment when he refused to pledge to support whatever candidate the party elected to serve as its nominee.

And the establishment understood that he was the gravest threat to their power and began attacking him.

What they didn’t understand was that he had goaded them into a fight that they could only lose.

The secret of Trump’s success has been a simple logical calculation. As the anti-establishment candidate, he has managed to castigate every criticism launched against him – no matter how valid – as the ravings of the corrupt establishment.

The establishment has not thrown in the towel though. According to one analysis, 91 percent of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign has been negative.

But the negative press has only strengthened his supporters’ conviction that he is the man of the hour.

But the attacks, again, have boomeranged.

A poll taken by USA Today earlier this week demonstrates this point. The poll asked likely voters, “What do you think is the primary threat that might try to change the election results?”

For months, the Clinton campaign has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf. Yet a mere 10 percent of voters polled said that “foreign interests such as Russian hackers,” would try to steal the elections.

On the other hand, 46 percent said the news media would. Another 21 percent said “the national political establishment” was intervening in the elections to shift the vote in the direction they wish.

In other words, 67 percent of voters believe that the establishment Trump is running against is trying to steal the elections.

Anti-Trump voters can be grouped into three often overlapping categories. First, of course there are the Democrats. These voters want Clinton to win. They support what Obama has done as president. They support Clinton because they want to see Obama’s policies continued and because they think she is the best candidate for the job.

Second, there is the establishment itself. In August The Washington Examiner polled Washington elites.

Among members of the Beltway establishment, support for Clinton is overwhelming. She beat Trump 62-22 percent. Twenty percent of Washington Republicans said they support Clinton.

These first two groups of anti-Trump voters support Clinton because they are more or less satisfied with the way things are.

The third group of anti-Trump voters oppose him because they believe that he is unfit to serve. They are Republicans and Independents.

It is this third group that brings us to the greatest anomaly of the election. According to Real Clear Politics’ average of polling data, Trump is trailing Clinton in national polls in a four-way race 43-45 percent. But at the same time, a mere 38 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him. In other words, millions of Americans who cannot stand Trump intend to vote for him on Tuesday.

This anomaly is explained by the public’s revulsion with the establishment. And this brings us to the Wikileaks documents and the FBI’s reopening of its criminal probe of Clinton and her team.

Clinton’s support levels have not dropped in the polls in the week that passed since Comey informed Congress that he had reopened the email probe.

On October 28, the Real Clear Politics poll average placed voter support for Clinton at 44.9 percent. On November 2, it had risen to 45.3 percent.

In the same time period, Trump’s support level rose from 41 to 43.6 percent.

Trump is rising because Republicans who have been undecided or have supported Libertarian Gary Johnson have decided to make their peace with him.

The renewed investigations against Clinton are not driving her voters away from her. As Clinton herself argued hours after Comey’s decision became public, her supporters have already factored in her legal difficulties. Trump is rising because with every new report of Clinton’s alleged corruption, Republican and Independent voters are reminded of how corrupt the establishment has become.

Their view of the lesser of two evils is shifting.

By Wednesday we will know whether the Republicans and Independents who are now accepting Trump will be enough to put him over the top. But what is clear enough today is that the voters who reject the establishment and view it as incurably corrupt will give Clinton no quarter if she manages to eke out a victory. At the same time, the establishment’s hatred of Trump will foment Washington battles the likes of which we have never seen, if he wins on Tuesday.

There is a lot hanging in the balance in this election. But only one question will determine the outcome.

If Trump wins on Tuesday, it will be the establishment he defeats.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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November 3, 2016

Checkmating Obama

In one of the immortal lines of Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Lobbying the administration is pointless. Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

Before turning to what Israel must do, first we need to understand what Israel can do.

A good place to begin is by considering what just transpired at UNESCO, where twice in a week, UNESCO bodies resolved to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The fight that Israel waged at UNESCO is not the fight it needs to wage at the Security Council. The stakes at the Security Council are far higher.

Like the UN General Assembly, UNESCO’s decisions are non-binding declarations that have no legal or operational significance. As such, there is no reason to expend great resources to fight them. For Israel, the goal of the fight at UNESCO is not to defeat anti-Israel initiatives. That is impossible given the Palestinians’ automatic majority.

The purpose of the fight at UNESCO is to humiliate European governments that side with antisemitic initiatives, and to weaken the congenitally anti-Israel body itself.

The government achieved both of these objectives. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s disavowal of his own government’s abstention from the vote on the first resolution – like the similar position taken after the fact by the Mexican government – was a diplomatic victory for Israel.

So too, the fact that UNESCO’s own Secretary-General Irina Bukova felt compelled to disavow her own agency’s actions by rejecting the resolution’s denial of the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem was a significant victory for Israel. Her statement was deeply damaging for UNESCO and its reputation.

Finally, the fact that Tanzania and the Philippines voted against the resolution was a testament to Israel’s capacity to convince other governments to abandon their traditional pro-Palestinian voting pattern.

The Palestinians won the vote at UNESCO because they are more powerful diplomatically than Israel. They have an automatic anti-Israel majority. But they weren’t empowered by their victory. To the contrary. They were bloodied by it.

In a sign of their weakening hold on member nations, the Palestinians and Jordanians felt compelled to send a threatening letter to the members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee lest they dare to vote against the resolution. Powerful players don’t make threats. They don’t need to.

Israel’s experience at UNESCO teaches us that there are governments that are open to counteroffers. Israel doesn’t need to hide in America’s shadow. It is capable of working on its own to blunt the impact of the Palestinians’ automatic majority. And it will need to use all of its resources to fend off a US-backed assault at the Security Council.

Unlike UNESCO, the Security Council can pass legally binding resolutions. Israel needs to be prepared to bring all of its resources to bear to prevent such a resolution from being adopted against it. Obama’s intention to abandon Israel at the Security Council means that Israel comes to this battle severely hobbled.

But there is one advantage to the US’s betrayal.

Over the years, Israel’s ability to trust the US to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council was been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the US has secured Israel from diplomatic assaults. But on the other hand, our ability to trust Washington has made us diplomatically lazy and ineffective.

Safe in Washington’s shadow, we have behaved as through all diplomacy is public diplomacy. That is, we have pretended that statecraft begins and ends with making the moral or strategic case for our side against the other guys.

But public diplomacy is just one diplomatic tool.

The Syrian regime, for instance, has no moral case for securing international support. Bashar Assad didn’t convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to support him by arguing that he is better than alternative regimes. He bought Putin’s support by offering him permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

Then there is Morocco, another weak state with no public diplomacy case to make. Last March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outraged Rabat when he acknowledged the plain fact that Western Sahara, which Morocco occupies, is “occupied territory.”

Morocco quickly secured the support of Spain and France and launched an all-out onslaught against Ban. How did Morocco manage?

Morocco’s most powerful diplomatic resource is its control over migration flows from North Africa to Europe. Anytime it wishes, Rabat can open the migratory floodgates just as easily as it can keep them shut. And the French and Spanish know it.

In less than a month, Ban issued repeated abject apologies.

Game. Set. Match. Morocco.

From reports to date, it appears that shortly after the US elections on November 8, the Malaysians or Egyptians will submit a Palestinian-backed resolution that defines Israeli communities in united Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as illegal. If the resolution is brought to a vote, the US will fail to veto it.

Such a resolution, or a resolution obligating Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, would cause Israel grave harm.

So what resources does Israel have to prevent this from happening?

Of course, we have public diplomacy. And that might work with some friendly nations. But it won’t get us over the top. We need to learn from the Syrian and Moroccan examples and consider what we have to offer Security Council members in exchange for their support in scuttling the approaching onslaught against us.

One such resource is the US Congress. Israel’s allies in Congress are sickened by the Obama administration’s devastating Middle East policies. A solid majority of lawmakers can be trusted to support actions that will reinforce Israel’s position.

Israel has other resources as well that we can trade on. We have natural gas. And we have technologies that the governments of the world require to surmount the challenges of the 21 century. There is no reason to give these resources away when we can trade them for diplomatic support.

As for the Palestinians, as the UNESCO vote showed, they are less popular now than at any time in the past 40 years. All they have to offer is threats and antisemitism. Both are powerful weapons.

But they are no longer invincible.

Israel’s goal must be to use our resources at the Security Council in a manner that will make it impossible for Obama to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass.

A method for achieving this goal has two components. The first component is to convince a friendly country on the Security Council to propose a balanced resolution that would counter the Palestinian-backed Israel-bashing one.

Such a resolution could include four points. First, it could deplore efforts to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Second, it can condemn the PA/PLO for their continued unlawful funding of terrorists.

Third, it can urge Israel to restrain settlement construction in areas that in previous negotiations have been identified as likely territory for a future Palestinian state.

Fourth, it can call on Israel and the PA to reinstate negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Israel has friendly ties with a few Security Council members, among them Uruguay and New Zealand. In the final weeks of the Obama era, it is possible that Israel will be able to convince one of them to submit a balanced resolution along these lines.

Obama would be hard-pressed to oppose such a resolution in favor of one that singles Israel out for rebuke.

But that still is insufficient. Obama can make Uruguay and New Zealand a better offer if he wishes.

And so we move to the second aspect of the plan.

If we learn nothing else from the Obama era, we must recognize that the time has come for Israel to stop sufficing with just one Security Council veto. Most states have several. And we need a few more.

Russia today is the best place to start our search for a second veto.

Putin is a dealmaker. As his agreement with Assad showed, he is willing to consider attractive offers. Obviously, Israel won’t offer Russia bases. But we do have other things to offer Putin in exchange for a veto.

For instance, in exchange for a Russian veto at the Security Council, Israel can offer Putin to lobby the US Congress to cancel US sanctions against Russia over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Israel has no dog in that fight. And the sanctions are not getting the US anywhere.

Putin might go for the deal for two reasons. First, by stepping into the breach and defending Israel against Obama, he will humiliate Obama.

Second, if Israel succeeds with the Congress, he will reap economic rewards.

For his part, Putin wouldn’t even have to openly side with Israel. All he would have to do is announce that in the interests of regional stability, Russia will not support an unbalanced resolution on Israel and the Palestinians.

If Putin supports a balanced resolution, Obama will be checkmated. His plan to take revenge on Israel for not following him off the strategic cliff will be foiled. Israel will have survived his presidency.

None of this will be easy. And success is far from assured. There are many more ways for Israel to fail than succeed. Our diplomatic weakness remains a millstone around our neck. But as the UNESCO resolutions showed, attacking Israel is no longer cost free. We are not powerless in the grip of circumstances. We have cards to play.

And now is the time to play them for all they are worth.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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November 3, 2016

Donald Trump Wins in Israel

With 30,000 absentee votes counted, exit polling suggests Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States, if American expats were the only ones deciding. Donald Trump wins the Israel primary with 49% of the vote.

Complete results of the exit poll, which includes state-by-state results, will be given out on Thursday. This exit poll was taken from Monday to Wednesday of this week. It included 1,140, and has a 3% margin of error.

Surprisingly voting was down in Israel compared to years past.

“I think that a lot of people expressed a lack of enthusiasm about either candidate,” Eitan Charnoff, iVoteIsrael executive director stated. “It will be interesting to see if that is reflected in the voting in the US next week as well.”

The results were also very different from 2012. In the previous election, iVoteIsrael’s exit poll found that 84% of Americans in Israel voted for Republican Mitt Romney and 14% voted to reelect US President Barack Obama.

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