Tag: Donald Trump

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Arab States Are Taking Trump Very Seriously

As an Arab and a Muslim, I could authoritatively confirm Arab states are now taking the US very seriously. This was not the case at all under Obama’s administration. Nonetheless, some in the media think otherwise, an example of that was a recent article by an Israeli-American journalist, who claims America was now “the laughing stock” of Arab and Muslim states, suggesting President Trump was just following Obama’s policies.

Let’s examine facts on the ground, as they speak louder than journalists watching from afar.  

What could be the most pressing issue for Trump’s foreign policy, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I reported months ago the administration had warned Hamas, PLO and their political partner, Jordan’s king, not to launch a third Intifada.  All three had been planning one.  It took a quick “warning” visit by the CIA’s director to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, instantly, both stopped their calls for a third Intifada.

Further, a so-called reconciliation deal between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was recently negotiated under Egyptian patronage, and American pressure. Some, claimed the Hamas terror group was receiving US endorsement and legitimization.  Little do they know that Hamas really handed Gaza to Egypt. 

That means America’s strong ally, President Sisi, is now Gaza’s caretaker. With him in position, Hamas can no longer conduct terror raids on Israel. In other words, the so-called reconciliation was a mere façade for this change for a de facto Egyptian takeover.

So, why did Hamas give in to Sisi? Our inside sources confirm the US Administration has authorized him to handle Hamas and even issued a threat: If Hamas begins another war with Israel; the US won’t stop Israel from going after Hamas to the end.

This is important; in 2014, Israel came close to annihilating Hamas but Obama stopped it. Trump won’t do that, to the contrary, he would bless Israel’s efforts. Hamas knows this, and many vocal journalists don’t.

If Hamas decides to rebel against Sisi, Israel would finish it off this time and the US won’t save Hamas.

Another allegation against President Trump is that he “had failed to protect the Kurds against the pro-Iran Iraqi government”. This could not be further from the truth.

The administration has been very supportive of the Kurds, and enabled their troops to establish themselves in huge areas in both Syria and Iraq which the US itself had liberated from ISIS. The US is wisely looking at gradual, de facto, Kurdish self-determination, through intelligence, military, and political commitments.

The US is against a premature Kurdish declaration of independence because it would be too risky to the Kurds themselves at the time, nonetheless, the US remains fully supportive of all the de facto mechanisms Kurdistan is executing. The sticking point appears to be in the “declaration” and not the right to self-determination, because a premature declaration destabilizes US plans that benefits the Kurds.  As the Iraqi state keeps failing – and this is not the US fault by any chance- it is only natural that a fully-functioning Kurdistan could become independent. Kurdistan is not there yet, but once it is, the US will be the most supportive.

Further, our intelligence sources confirm the US has already warned the Iraqi government against an attack on the Kurdish areas beyond Kirkuk.  And even pressured Iraq to use an unprecedented term: “the disputed areas with the Kurds”, now only Kirkuk is a “disputed area”, before that, Iraq’s government considered all of Kurdistan as a mere Iraqi governorate.  

A US Congressman, Duncan Hunter, is making a fuss about Iraqi troops using US tanks while waving Hezbollah flags. What he fails to understand is this: Iraq’s dependence on American arms puts the Iraqi military under the mercy of the US. The US could just stop spare parts supply to Iraq at any moment and those tanks would become junk.  This is why the US has just recently delivered more F16s to Iraq. Should Iraq bomb the Kurds with them, the US could stop spare parts supplies. An Iraqi source has confirmed to me: “Our spare parts supply is enough for our F16s operations for no more than two weeks, the Americans are very cheap with spare parts, they give us drop by drop”.  

In fact, the pro-Iran Iraqi government was so helpless that it had to “criminalize the waving of Israeli flags”. Meanwhile, the Kurds are still waving both the Israeli and Kurdish flags on their soil, more evidence Iraq has no power over Kurdistan. Nor has Iran.

On the other hand, Congressman Hunter began pushing for sales of lethal drones to Jordan’s king just weeks after a Jordanian airman executed three US Green Berets, and Jordan’s regime was officially and publicly defending the killer and blaming the American victims. Why is Hunter so two-faced? 

Meanwhile, many seem to swiftly overlook Trump’s biggest accomplishment: ISIS is almost gone! The very ISIS that had thrived under Obama’s nose

Without publicity and drama, and in his first month in the White House, President Trump deployed US special forces in cooperation with Egyptian and Kurdish troops to attack ISIS in Syria. ISIS has lost 90 percent of its area and thousands of fighters.

Also, Trump has deployed America’s military might to secure a ceasefire in Syria. Bloodshed has dropped to very low rates. No more epic massacres from either side. And while Russia is claiming victory, the US boots on the grounds are calling the shots, and the US has full control of Syria’s airspace.

Additionally, safe zones have been created and Syrian refugees are returning home, while the flow of those into Europe has dropped.

Why is this so avidly overlooked by the liberal and leftist media?

Trump’s war on ISIS did not stop with the military. The President took a trip to Saudi Arabia to meet Arab leaders and pressed Sunni states to cut all kinds of support to Islamist terror. Most of them welcomed the call, while others chose to keep supporting Islamists and are now paying for that.  For example, Qatar, is now under economic and political siege by most Arab countries, while Jordan’s king is isolated and shunned by most Arab states.

This could have never happened if Trump was not in office.

Even more, Trump has offered full support and cooperation to Saudi Arabia’s modernizing crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, who has allowed women to drive, as well as locked up all terror-inciters and radical preachers. Bin Salman is now advocating a 2030 vision for Saudi, where moderation and peace become the norm, with a window open for a just and lasting peace with Israel. As a result, most Arab states are now seeking regional peace with Israel. This is what the president’s peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt, has been silently and tirelessly working on, without the show off and noise.

Arab states are taking America very seriously now, they know there is a new, tough, decisive and strong sheriff in town. This is good for America, Israel and us, the Arab people too.

In the MidEast, America is great again!

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PERMANENT INVESTIGATION: HOW THE MEDIA USES THE ANTI-NETANYAHU PLAYBOOK AGAINST TRUMP

And how to resist it.

The latest news from Israel’s left-wing media outlets is that Ratan Tata, an Indian billionaire, testified to the Israeli police about Prime Minister Netanyahu. The story turned out to be fake news. And that’s true of most of their anti-Netanyahu hit pieces along with the police investigations that accompany them.

But that doesn’t matter.

Americans are just now being introduced to the permanent investigation and its scandal rolodex. Israelis have been living with this Deep State assault against their democracy for much longer. Over eight long years, leftists in the judicial system and the media have manufactured a non-stop campaign of scandals and investigations against Netanyahu. The investigations and the scandals fall apart, but it doesn’t matter because there are usually several being rotated in and out from the scandal rolodex.

The scandals and investigations fall into two categories that should be familiar to Trump supporters.

Category one scandals link some random billionaire to Netanyahu through a chain of connections. The random billionaire in this case is Indian. Then there’s an Australian billionaire in Mexico, German shipbuilders and whatever part of the globe the media-judicial alliance throws a dart at next.

The fake news media in this country is following the same game plan. The latest media hit pieces target Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, in much the same way. Indeed the Russia scandal developed out of media hit pieces that used Trump’s international network of businesses to build up very similar conspiracy theories about foreign interests and influences.

These types of scandals constantly imply corruption without ever actually proving it. But by generating a whole lot of them, they create the sense that Netanyahu or Trump must have done something wrong.

Though no one can say what, because no one can keep track of all the fake scandals.

Category two scandals are character attacks. “He’s a bad person.” Typical examples are Trump’s condolence call controversy and accusations that Netanyahu’s wife is mean to employees.

These types of scandals are straightforward gossip. But lefties have tried to transform them into legal cases. Just about anyone who has ever worked for the Netanyahu family can walk out of the door and have a standing offer to file a lawsuit and do a tour of the media alleging horrible treatment. And the left is trying to advance similar lawsuits against President Trump.

There are lessons to be learned for Trump and Trump supporters from Netanyahu’s experiences.

First, permanent investigations don’t resolve. Trying to wait them out doesn’t work. They never go away until the left wins. An investigation that doesn’t pan out gets swapped out for another one. There are three investigations targeting Netanyahu. If none of them get results, there will be three others.

Everyone knows that.

Second, the purpose of a permanent investigation isn’t to get results. The left would love it if their investigations finally brought down Trump or Netanyahu, but they know that’s a long shot.

The permanent investigation’s real goals are to inflict electoral and policy damage: tying down a targeted politician in scandals so that the public loses confidence in him and preventing him from focusing on his policies. What the left wants is to win elections and stop conservative policies.

The scandals and investigations are political sabotage. And should be treated that way. They’re not about Trump or Netanyahu. They’re about protecting illegal immigration and Islamic terrorists.

Third, the investigations isolate their target by harassing staffers, friends, donors and political allies.

The investigations are a political operation. And so their targets are political. The purpose of the attack is to take out loyal staffers and force allies to keep their distance out of fear that they’ll be next.

Taking out Flynn left Trump with few options except McMaster. And that allowed the swamp to reclaim the National Security Council and protect the eavesdropping operation against Trump. The likely Flynn charges have little to do with the reason he was forced to resign or any accusations against Trump.

But that doesn’t matter. The real goal was to remove Flynn. The details don’t matter.

Thinning out a target’s inner circle makes it harder for him to find competent and loyal replacements. And that makes it all too easy for the swamp to plant its own people in his inner circle. And even if the staffers and allies stay loyal, the investigations make it harder for them to get anything done.

And that too is the point.

This may seem like a grim picture of what the next term or two will look like. But it’s not all grim.

Netanyahu made it through eight years by not letting the scandals drag him down. Even when the attacks against him and his family were as vicious, nasty and personal as the left could get.

He even turned the constant scandals and investigations into a hilarious campaign ad.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has accepted them as a fact of life in a political system where the left’s anti-Israel extremism has made it toxic to voters even while it still controls much of the establishment.

The permanent scandal has been met with permanent scandal fatigue by the public. Israelis have been living through years of hysterical headlines about Netanyahu’s ice cream eating (CNN did its own version of a Trump ice cream scandal with “Trump gets 2 scoops of ice cream, everyone else gets 1”), his wife’s bottle deposits, their children’s misbehavior, their nannies and his bed.

Hardly anyone outside the media bubble cares. Netanyahu’s reputation has been damaged with the media’s low information voters, but he’s still Israel’s longest serving consecutive prime minister.

The Israeli lefty media reacted to its narrative failures the same way that its American counterparts did.

After Trump’s win, the media launched a crusade against “fake news” enlisting Google and Facebook to censor results based on the opinions of the media’s “fact check” operations. Their Israeli counterparts were even more brazen. After a previous Netanyahu victory, they rolled out the “Law for the Advancement and Protection of Written Journalism in Israel”.

The law “advanced and protected” written journalism by banning the distribution of successful free newspapers. The real purpose of the law was to ban the pro-Netanyahu paper, Israel Hayom.

But the media’s censorship crusade didn’t accomplish anything.

The media has an exaggerated sense of its own power and of the gullibility of the public. The two fallacies are interrelated. When people don’t listen to it, the media assumes that since they’re too stupid to have their own ideas, they must be getting all their ideas from some other source. Stamp out this other source, online or offline, and the people will go back to believing what they’re told.

It doesn’t work so well when the media has a worldview and interests that are at odds with the people.

Netanyahu is still around because he represents the public better than the establishment does. The same is true of Trump. And the establishment can’t look in the mirror long enough to understand that.

In free countries, the left operates on two tracks: the democratic and the undemocratic. When it loses democratically, it redoubles its undemocratic efforts to retain power. Scandals and investigations are the tools of an undemocratic establishment. But they can’t overthrow the will of the people.

When conservative leaders stay strong, the scandals and investigations blow away like the wind.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

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From Meuller to Mandelbilt

In the Mueller probe and the incessant probes against Netanyahu we see the new face of the Left.

There are stunning parallels between US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged collusion between US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia and the ongoing criminal probes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara.

Monday, after a weekend filled with speculation due to an illegal media leak regarding sealed grand jury indictments, Mueller and his team indicted two former Trump campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, for offenses related to their business and lobbying actions allegedly carried out between 2006 and 2014.

Mueller also announced that George Papadopoulos, a junior campaign aide, pled guilty to lying to investigators about a meeting he tried to arrange between then candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As commentators across the political spectrum have noted, none of the charges against Manafort and Gates have anything to do with Trump’s presidential campaign.

As for Papadopoulos, his story exculpates rather than implicates Trump’s campaign in collusion with Russia.

Not only did Papadopoulos’s boss on the campaign reject his offer to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, the actions described in his indictment demonstrate that the Trump campaign had no significant ties to the Russian regime.

And yet, despite the apparent absence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, no one expects Mueller to close down shop. To the contrary.

The Manafort and Gates indictments and the Papadopoulos plea tell us that Mueller has abandoned the stated purpose of his investigation. Having found no evidence of collusion – criminal or otherwise – between the Trump campaign and Russia, he has decided to investigate the business dealings of Trump and his associates going back decades.

Mueller’s move demonstrates that he does not view it as his job to incriminate or exonerate Trump regarding alleged collusion with Russia. Indeed, he doesn’t view it as his responsibility to investigate Russian involvement in the 2016 elections at all.

If he thought that was his job, then Mueller would not be expanding his writ to include alleged crimes carried out by Trump’s associates that any US attorney could be investigating. He would be expanding his probe to include the growing mountain of evidence of collusion on the part of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and their attorneys, as well as Mueller’s friend and successor as FBI director, James Comey, with foreign agents, including Russian government officials, during and in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mueller’s apparent refusal to follow the evidence where it leads him regarding Russian involvement in the 2016 elections and his decision instead to investigate any and all suspicions against Trump and his associates whenever the events in question may have taken place tells us that he views himself as a hunter, not an investigator. His prey is Trump.

Mueller will continue to hunt Trump until one of three things happen.

Mueller may eventually find something – anything – to charge Trump with. Such a finding will precipitate an impeachment hearing in Congress that could lead to Trump’s removal from office.

His hunt may find nothing against Trump, but just as it netted Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos this week, it may bring down other people related to Trump. At a minimum, his continued probe will keep those close to Trump under continuous investigation. In this case, Mueller’s probe will dominate Trump’s presidency and make it impossible for Trump to govern in accordance with the agenda he was elected to advance.

The third possible outcome is that Trump fires Mueller and ends his probe or that Congress defunds his probe or limits its duration. Such moves would require the unanimous support of congressional and Senate Republicans, which currently is not on offer.

The threat that Mueller’s investigation represents to US democracy couldn’t be clearer.

By making it clear through their actions to date that they will not stop their investigation until they get Trump, Mueller and his associates apparently view their investigation as a means to either overturn the election results or render them irrelevant. If Trump is either pushed out of office or denied the ability to govern in accordance with the agenda he ran on, then Mueller will have achieved that goal.

This then brings us to Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and the political Right won a massive electoral victory in 2015. For the first time in many years, the Right won indisputably. There are no coalition partners who place appeasing the PLO at the top of their governing agenda or even in the middle of their agenda.

Netanyahu and his political camp’s victory came as a shock to Israel’s elites. Led by the media, which was itself an adjunct of the anti-Netanyahu campaign, and assisted by the Obama administration, which siphoned US government funds into anti-Netanyahu political groups, Israel’s elites were flummoxed by the election results.

Shortly after the election, the anti-Netanyahu media, with the support of police investigators, went on a hunt to find something – anything – to force Netanyahu from office. In the end, all they could come up with were two otherwise absurd allegations.

First, that Netanyahu received too many gifts from his wealthy friends. Specifically, he allegedly received too many cigars from his friend Arnon Milchen. Second, Netanyahu taped himself discussing with his nemesis, Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon Mozes, the possibility of winning less adversarial coverage from Yediot Ahronot in exchange for lobbying Israel Hayom, which is owned by Netanyahu’s friend Sheldon Adelson, to cut back its circulation and so diminish its competitive edge over Yediot. This discussion, which came to nothing, was discovered by police investigators during their investigation of Netanyahu’s former chief of staff for alleged crimes unrelated to Netanyahu.

If the allegations were directed against any other politician, there is no doubt that they would not have led to police investigations. The late president Shimon Peres’s legendary use of the public trough to pay for his lavish parties and lifestyle were never the subject of investigation. Former prime minister Ehud Barak never faced investigation over his allegedly sketchy business dealings or his deeply suspect campaign financing operations. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert was never investigated for the massive collection of expensive pens that he was showered with by “friends” during his tenure in government.

And none the 43 lawmakers who voted in favor of a bill backed by Mozes to shut down Israel Hayom were ever investigated for their votes.

But with Netanyahu, with the prodding and active support of the media the police are pursuing multi-million shekel investigations around the world to find and interrogate Netanyahu’s friends and ask them about their gifts to him. Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich has hired Lior Horev, one of Israel’s top anti-Netanyahu political consultants, to serve as the police’s public relations representative.

As for the probes against Sara Netanyahu, every day the public is treated to yet more salacious, unsubstantiated tales of her alleged abuse of workers at the Prime Minister’s Residence.

While Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit did not initiate the probes against Netanyahu, he has done nothing to stop them. This despite their demonstrably prejudicial nature. Mandelblit is a product of the system that has turned the police, media and state prosecution into a political party united in their common goal of hunting the political Right. As a result, he can be expected to go along with whatever they do. If the police recommend indicting Netanyahu, Mandelblit can be counted on to dutifully indict him, even though the acts he is suspected of committing are not crimes.

Given the current dynamic, the only way for Netanyahu not be forced from office for actions that aren’t even criminal is for his political associates to rein in the out of control police and state prosecution by limiting their authority. So far, the media have cowed them into inaction.

In the Mueller probe and the incessant probes against Netanyahu we see the new face of the Left. Unable to win elections, they exploit their control over the bureaucracy and media to overturn election results.

There can be no greater threat to the health of a liberal democracy than that.

Two things must happen for this situation to be corrected.

First, we must recognize what is happening and what it means for our systems of governance. Second, lawmakers in Congress and the Knesset alike need to stand up to the media and the legal fraternities and bravely restore the power to govern to those in whom the public has vested it.

Originally Published on the Jerusalem Post.

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Mueller Indicts Manafort, Is a Soft Coup Underway?

Paul Manafort the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump and Manafort’s longtime business partner Rick Gates have been charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money and making false statements.

To most experts, these indictments issued by Special Counselor Robert Mueller III are only the beginning.  Retired Gen. Flynn who served as the head of the NSC for a brief time in the beginning of Trump’s term is under active investigation as are other members of Trump’s campaign.

The real question is whether Mueller will go as far as investigating and indicting Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. who both met with Russian linked associates during the campaign. With Mueller on the roll, the investigation will be pushed ahead and risks entrapping Trump with the Nixonian decision to either let Mueller go the distance or fire him, which could bring about articles of impeachment by both Democrats and Republicans looking to take him down.

All of this of course appears to be a massive move by the Deep State to either pressure Trump to run the country according to their designs or face removal.  With Mueller making a political issue that much more divisive by only focusing on Trump when it has been proven that Hillary Clinton cavorted with the Russians during campaign, the special council risks tearing an already divided country apart.

Chaos, Russian Style

The investigation into Russian influence during the campaign appears to be Russian influenced itself.  Putin never had a winning horse in the race, but wanted to create the feeling he was involved in order to inflict doubt about the winner across the American public.  With Mueller’s probe continuing and both right and left at each other’s throats, Putin has begun to gain the upper hand against the USA by pushing its internal divisions to the extreme.  This has allowed Russia to take advantage of an administration that has been “under the proverbial gun” since the beginning.

For Putin, it doesn’t matter if Trump is removed or not, the mere fact that there is an investigation is enough to weaken America and allow Russia to assert control and influence over Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

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Who Will Stop Iran?

Since President Donald Trump’s famous Iran policy speech, Iran has been on the move, in a sense testing how serious the USA was in stopping their forward march.  They have used the Iraqi military, the USA has financed and trained to occupy Kirkuk and as of this morning crossed over into territory enshrined as Iraqi Kurdistan by even the most ardent Iraqi constitutionalists.

With all of the Kurdish infighting aside, the Kurds are still both America’s and Israel’s most reliable partner in the Middle East and they are the last force capable of blocking an Iranian advance.  The Iraqi military and the Iranian backed PMU have been unlawfully using American weapons against the Kurds. Of course, this has caught the ire of the US Congress who has become vocal in its urging of the White House to come to the aid of the Kurds before it is too late.

The failure to stop Iran now will not only hand the region over to the Iranian Mullahs, it will spell the end of American dominance at a global level. Afterall, if Israel and the Kurds, as well as the Saudis sense that the USA can no longer be counted on to ensure stability in the region, there are others that may be able to.

This is why Israel, Saudi Arabia, and parts of the Kurdish leadership are now in deep discussions with Putin and his military leadership. While this may be a ploy to force the USA to act, it appears to be a recognition of the new reality on the ground.  The only question to the three countries listed above, what will they have to pay to the Russian Bear to ensure it tightens the leash on Iran?